Deal with a Devil
by Silently Watches
Summary: She was an agent of Evil who regretted her choices. He was a child with a destiny too heavy for his shoulders. Is the Wizarding World ready for a Boy-Who-Lived influenced by a reforming Fallen Angel? …Probably not. NOT Harry/Lash
1. The Denarius

**Yes, it's here at long last; those of you who have been pestering me for the past year to work on this story (you know who you are!) can finally relax and leave me alone. Now, since I'm sure you're already getting tired of my blathering, let's get this party started!**

**Disclaimer:** Did Harry stay locked in the cupboard under the stairs for an undefined period of time after vanishing the glass at the zoo, even though it is made clear in the next chapter that school was still in session when Vernon threw him in there? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 1  
****The Denarius**

Wind whistled through the forest, branches barren of leaves. Flakes of white and grey fell to cover the ground, not snow but ash, and the trees' bark was scorched and cracked. A single road cut through the trees, perfectly straight and ten feet wide. Not a single creature stirred in this place; not a bird, not a squirrel, not a deer or wolf or rabbit. Desolation stretched as far as the eye could see.

Except for the lone figure walking down the road.

She was a young woman, blonde hair disheveled and her blue-green eyes shadowed in despair. Her gaze again rose from the ground immediately in front of her, but she still could not see where this path was leading her. Her bare feet trudged through the ankle-deep ash for a few steps more before she came to a halt. With a slow shake of her head, she did not sit so much as drop to the ground, then she pulled her knees to her chest.

_What is even the point?_, she asked herself, her hands clenched tight around the sackcloth tunic she wore. How long had she been wandering this plane of existence? She could not tell; her last memories before awakening in this place were strangely distorted, feeling both as if only a second had passed and at the same time were thousands of years ago. _Is this my punishment for going against my nature? For listening to a mortal's words rather than my own wisdom?_

A shadow of a greater and more terrible entity, that was all she was. She had been cleaved off for a single purpose: to make a certain wizard take up the coin her full self rested within. It was not the first time such a thing had happened to her or another of her compatriots over the millennia, but she was the only one she knew of who had ever failed in her task. Four years she had spent lurking around the edges of his mind and soul, two of which she had even been in communication with him, but for all her skill at manipulation, somehow that man had proven more stubborn than any other she had known. Instead, he insisted despite all evidence to the contrary that _she_ was the malleable one, even going so far as to suggest that an existence such as she, an angel cast out of Heaven, could change her nature.

Yes, he was a foolishly stubborn mortal. Stubborn, reckless, sentimental, charismatic, noble… Much too noble. Was it any wonder she had been swayed by the words of one Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden?

She had believed him, and when Dresden stood alone in middle of the White Court, his foes supported by forces barred from that little corner of Creation, she put her will, her magic, her very essence between him and them. All she had went into breaking the curse of despair laid upon him, and when it came time to pay the cost of her interference, she gladly accepted it. She had died, given her life for another. It was an action she had not once considered since her and her allies' ill-fated Rebellion.

_But I also thought what awaited me upon my destruction was oblivion. I am nothing more than a shade, and so there should be nothing afterward for me. Instead, I find myself here, wherever here is. Not Heaven, yet not Hell._

Her shadow leapt ahead of her as the world was bathed in golden light, and the soft _rustle-clank_ of metal boots sinking into the ash made her drop her head. Perhaps this was Hell, after all, a wing that had been created especially for her torment.

The stranger walked slowly around her, and she had to raise her arm to shield her eyes from the piercing radiance. Her skin sizzled and stung as the holy light began to eat away at her. After a moment, the pain vanished, and she slowly looked under her hand to find that the armor had changed, appearing now as if it had been merely forged from sunlight rather than the star's fire itself. Her less-impaired vision also allowed her to see the long, thin dagger hanging from the stranger's belt, its keen tip gleaming.

She knew that blade, and the one who wielded it, too. Knew him too well for her tastes. The Spymaster. The Avenger. The one the Almighty sent when His Will required subtlety.

"Uriel."

"Lasciel," he replied. "He did not tell me whom I sought here, only that I would know her when I found her. I never would have expected that it would be you."

"That makes two of us," she said cautiously, her narrowed eyes still on his weapon. This conversation held less of her attention than did her memories of the last time she felt its cruel bite. "And in that vein, where is here?"

"If you do not know that, then it is not my place to tell you."

She barely withheld a sneer at his condescending tone. And that was the reason she did not like this particular archangel. Admittedly, she was not fond of any of them – none of the Fallen were – but she held Uriel in special contempt. At least Michael and Gabriel, for all their sanctimony, recalled that the Fallen were once counted among the Hosts' ranks and treated them as such. "Why are you even here, Uriel?"

He hummed for a moment. "I wonder…"

That pulled a laugh from her, the sound ugly and bitter but even more resigned. "So that is your game, then." She crossed her arms on her knees and rested her forehead upon them, her hair parting to reveal the back of her neck. "What are you waiting for, Assassin? Fulfill your duty."

Her eyes closed as she waited to feel the stiletto's sting. A holding cell, that was what this place was. A road to nowhere so that she might be kept in place until her execution could be completed, and nothing to distract her so she would not have one last bit of enjoyment before her end. How callous, and at the same time expected from her enemies.

She felt a wave of heat pass by her, and when she peered ever so cautiously over her arms, she discovered that Uriel had abandoned his nimbus of light and his armor. Instead he appeared as a human, a man with dark skin and golden hair, dressed in a plain white toga and sitting on a short wooden stool. Meeting her gaze, he tilted his head to the side. "Who are you?"

"Have the eternities finally caught up with you?" she taunted weakly. "You know exactly who I am. You said my name only seconds ago. I am Lasciel."

"No. No, you are not." He gave her an enigmatic smile and tapped his chin with the forefinger of one hand. "I know Lasciel. I have seen her soul. Yours is not the same."

"I… What?" She looked down at her arms and legs again, a terrifying suspicion coming together in her head. Had Dresden actually been right? In a tiny voice, she asked, "I truly have my own soul?"

"Yes. Oh, it is not new and pure; make no mistake about that. Each time you tempted Dresden to pick up Lasciel's coin and forfeit his own soul has stained it. Despite that, it does not carry the blight of all the sins the true Lasciel committed. And you had no idea." Uriel chuckled for a moment. "Determining your ultimate fate would be an interesting, if frustrating, exercise. I am quite glad that is not the task assigned to me."

His offhanded comment was like a bucket of cold water dumped on her head. If she truly had a soul, one all her own, her death meant a number of issues she would much rather not deal with right now. She latched onto the last thing he said to keep her mind off that predicament. "Then what is your task?"

"That depends. Tell me, Lasciel…" He trailed off and shook his head. "No, Dresden had the right of it. _Lash_, do you seek redemption?"

She blinked slowly, confusion written on her face. "I never would have expected _you_ to ask me that question."

"Nor would I, if I may tell you. And yet, my question stands."

She bit her lip. Redemption? It was not something she had ever considered, not seriously. The Fallens' actions prevented them from ever attaining redemption, from ever returning to their places of glory. None had even thought to attempt it. And now this impossibility was being all but dumped in her lap? Her mind turned back to Uriel's comments about the polluted state of her soul, and the memory of her and her fellow Denarians' fearful flight from the Lake of Fire threatened to overwhelm her for a moment. "Y-Yes. Yes, I want redemption."

The angel before her nodded. "He thought you might." Then he raised the hand not resting on his chin, and a glint caught her eye. He held a coin, a shiny, silver coin, and she did not need to see the rough edges or the bust of Tiberius Caesar to recognize it.

It was a Roman denarius.

"There is a boy," Uriel said, breaking her out of her shock, "a child who was born with a heavy destiny indeed. A wizard chose a dark path and slaughtered his way through what he thought of as his world, and though he was stopped for a time, it is this boy's fate to stand against him once again and end his evil forever. Unfortunately, the arrogance and foolishness of others has placed him in a position where that is becoming less and less likely."

"Mortal mistakes, mortal problems," she commented with a raised eyebrow. "Humans do as they please, and if a few mortals want to make trouble for a boy, that is their concern. I fail to see how this is cause for divine intervention."

"Normally, it would not be. However, the wizard this boy is meant to face found certain books and learned how to distort his soul, knowledge that will permit his followers to resurrect him before he is meant to return and will also return intact the full scope of his abilities rather than rendering him much weakened. There is only one source a human could seek out to discover that particular bit of information."

"Us. The Fallen." Now things were making more sense. A fallen angel interfering in mortal affairs that flagrantly practically demanded a response from Heaven. The Denarians were cautious about how they worked for that very reason, foregoing the more expedient route of outright possessing the humans and instead offering power and advice until their hosts were so reliant on their guidance that the mortals would suborn their free wills to the Fallens' own, and even that had been sufficient to prompt the forging of the three Swords of the Cross to stymie them. Releasing the kind of information Uriel was talking about, though; that was the action of an individual who either had no long-term agenda or was paradoxically executing an incredibly convoluted plot. "Who was it? The one who had those books written?"

Uriel scowled. "I do not yet know." And if the look on his face was any indication, oh did that ever rankle! She almost wanted to track down the Fallen in question and congratulate him just for that. "Nevertheless, that is reason enough for the Host to intervene. Normally we would clear the way ever so slightly, give the lightest of assistances, for even in this our allowance to influence the mortals is limited.

"But now I find you here," he said, his damnable smile returning as he looked at her. "A third party, one with total autonomy. If all I do is send you to the boy so you might help him in our stead, I will be acting well within my boundaries and still have a little leeway left I might make use of later."

Surely she was imagining this. "Let me see if I have this right. You want to send me, a fallen angel, back to the world of the living. Me, who spent two thousand years seducing mortals into surrendering their wills to my own. And you want me to – what, teach this boy? guide him? – while I will be able to do whatever I wish. I could lead him astray from the purpose you have for him, and there would be nothing you could do to stop me." She shook her head and glared at him. "I am not a fool, Uriel; there is a catch here. What are you trying to hide?"

"You are still so quick to accuse others. I have not yet finished my proposal." She rolled her eyes. He was not finished, but only because she called him out on it. If mortals thought the faeries were skilled at lying with the truth, they should try arguing with angels. "Yes, you will have autonomy, but do not forget what the prize is. _Redemption_. This is your second chance, Lash," he said, walking the denarius along his knuckles in a show of affected nonchalance. "What you do with it is up to you, of course. You could ape Lasciel, manipulating the poor boy as if he were nothing more than a puppet, and in doing so continue blackening your soul. I think you can guess what would be the consequences of that course of action."

Despite the mild tone of his voice, the threat still made her flinch.

"Or you could be better than you were." The corner of Uriel's mouth twitched with a hidden smile. "Humans have an incredible capacity to rise above their base natures and improve themselves. It is truly a fascinating characteristic. You are not a human, Lash, but I dare say you are more human than you are angel. Can you be better than Lasciel?"

She looked away, unwilling to rise to his baiting. Mostly it was because she was not sure of the answer. "How was the wizard defeated before? It should not be that hard to emulate."

"Not hard at all. The boy's mother sacrificed herself for him, giving up her life so he might live. You already know about that firsthand." A cold shiver ran down her spine, and he continued in a gentler voice, "_'Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.'_ What you did for Dresden was humbling, a step even we would hesitate to undertake. All the same, do not feel you must repeat it. So long as you protect this boy and prepare him for his destiny, you will have a chance at the reward you so deeply desire.

"That is, if you are still interested."

Lash licked her lips, hesitating for a moment so she might fortify her shaken nerves. "I am. Interested, that is."

"Good. I will delay you no longer. Who knows? When you have completed your task, I might even be the one who relays His pronouncement." She glared at him, and he chuckled before tossing the coin to her. Her fingers closed around it, and she faded from that place.

Now alone, Uriel sighed before returning to his true form. "This is a most confusing journey You have placed them upon. Yet all the same, Your Will be done."

* * *

Harry looked down from the roof, his stomach queasy after… whatever that had been. His cousin Dudley and his gang had decided that this was a great time for another round of 'Harry Hunting', and with Malcolm to distract the teacher supervising their recess period, he knew he was in trouble. Normally he could get away and hide where they couldn't find him because he was faster than the other boys, but today his preferred route around the school was blocked with a dumpster that had been emptied and not put back in his place. He had spun around in fear, desperate to find some other path to safety.

And then he somehow appeared on top of the school's roof.

_Uncle Vernon is not going to be happy_, he thought, hastily jerking his head back when Dudley looked up. From the fat boy's shout, he had not been fast enough. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were always especially thorough with their punishments whenever he did something strange or _'freakish'_, and getting from the ground up to the roof of a two-story building in an instant was definitely that. _Maybe I can say the wind just carried me up here?_

He shook his head; that was probably the worst excuse he had come up with in a long while. The wind would have a hard time picking him up, no matter how thin he might be. Despite what his aunt and uncle told him, he wasn't stupid. Everyone else in his class had decent clothes, not too-large hand-me-downs and trainers held together with more tape than shoe. They had colorful lunch boxes filled with food every day. They did not have to worry about their stomachs growling in the middle of the lessons because they had not eaten the previous night. The question he had was always why it was him who was treated differently, and there were only a few possibilities. Phil had glasses, too, but they were shiny and new, not like his bulky plastic frames, so that wasn't why the Dursleys hated him. It wasn't because he was their nephew instead of their son, either; Michelle had lost her parents when she was a toddler, and her uncle absolutely doted on her.

So, if it wasn't his glasses and it wasn't because he was their nephew, it had to be the odd things that had a tendency to happen around him. A sweater shrinking in front of him when he refused to wear it, his teacher's wig changing color, burned or underdone food becoming perfect without him having to do anything. The roses Aunt Petunia had him weed around always looked better than all the neighbors' hedges, and once Dudley had broken a window and blamed it on him only for it to be fixed when he gave it another look. None of it was bad, really – even Mr. Pittman, after getting over the shock of his wig suddenly turning blue, had laughed about the whole thing and worn it like that for the rest of the week before getting a new one – but each time it happened he was guaranteed a week in his cupboard at the very least.

He wondered how bad it was going to be for appearing on the roof, but then he turned his thoughts away. He would find out soon enough.

_And winter hols start tomorrow!_, he realized. Dread collected in his stomach. The Christmas break lasted for two weeks, and that meant the Dursleys could lock him in for as long as they wanted without having to call the school and make an excuse for why he wasn't there. That was bad; they always fed him fewer meals when he was getting punished, and since Dudley had spotted him, he wouldn't have any time to hide bags of crisps or bottles of water in his bed before they put him in there. Maybe, if he was really quick, he could stuff a few things in his shirt before Dudley thought to tell them about—

A glint of light broke his train of thought, and he looked over to figure out what it was. There, in the middle of the roof, the sunlight was being reflected off a little bit of metal. He walked over, worry forgotten in favor of curiosity.

There was a coin stuck in the shingles. Glancing around to make sure none of the teachers had climbed up to scold him yet, he cautiously bent down and grabbed it. One tug had it free, and he examined his prize. Never had he seen a coin like this.

It definitely wasn't British, that much he knew. For one, it did not have the Queen's head on it but instead some man's, and the edges were notched and rounded rather than smooth and flat. He took another look at the back; while the writing was in the normal alphabet, none of the words were really words, just jumbles of letters.

_Maybe it's foreign_. His eyes lit up at the thought. He heard bits and pieces of the telly when Dudley watched it while he did his chores, so he knew there were people who payed lots of money for strange coins like this. Uncle Vernon always said anyone who collected lots of stuff from other countries was not properly British, but Harry didn't care. If he could get money for this coin, then he could buy food to keep in his cupboard, or better yet, in the old shed near the park. If it was there, he could sneak it in a little at a time without having to worry that Uncle Vernon would peek in his cupboard and find his stash.

Without warning, the lightning bolt scar on his forehead – the only evidence of the car crash that had killed his parents – suddenly burned like someone had shoved a hot wire into his skull. He shouted and dropped the coin, but as quickly as it had come the pain disappeared. Looking down to find where his newfound treasure had fallen, he sighed when he saw that it had broken into several pieces. _It wasn't real, anyway_, he told himself as the shattered pieces crumbled into dust that was quickly blown away. _No one would leave a rare coin like that lying around on a rooftop. It was probably just some joke that someone put up here and forgot about_.

"Harry Potter! Get down from there right this instant!"

Wincing at the shrill sound of Mrs. Nicholson's voice, he looked around to see if he could find stairs or a ladder. He was already in enough trouble. No reason to make it worse.

* * *

He had been right. Dudley spilled the beans about Harry's sudden disappearance and reappearance to Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia as soon as they walked through the door, and even if Dudley had not done that, the two adult Dursleys already knew. The principle had called Aunt Petunia while he and Dudley were still walking back from the bus stop to complain about him climbing on school buildings, and the man's insistence that they needed to do a better job of getting him under control had not helped matters.

Harry barely had a chance to take his ratty backpack off before Uncle Vernon had literally thrown him into the cupboard under the stairs and locked the door behind him.

That had been hours ago, and now the house was dark and silent. There was just enough of a crack where the door did not completely meet the frame that he could peek out and see the streetlamp through the kitchen window, but it was not wide enough for him to see the clock to find out what time it was.

His stomach rumbled again, and he wrapped his arms around his belly with a scowl. He knew from long experience that it would continue to growl at him until around dinnertime tomorrow, and if he were not fed by then, it would start trying to get his attention by cramping up. He also knew he would be lucky if the Dursleys gave him any food until the day after that.

Another growl from his midsection was echoed by one from his throat. Why did the Dursleys do this to him, just for stuff that happened around him? It wasn't his fault!

What was more, he knew the way they treated him was wrong. A nice policeman with a dog had come by his class last year and told them all that if any grown-up ever hit them or didn't let them eat for a day or touched them in bad places, they were supposed to dial 999, and while the Dursleys had never done the last, they had certainly done the other two. Harry had considered calling the police and telling them about what went on in Number Four, but no one else on Privet Drive had ever cared about what the Dursleys did to him. They were all perfectly fine thinking he was some sort of hooligan, even though no one had ever seen him do anything bad, and he wasn't sure if the police would be any different. It was the same in school: Dudley and his gang could do something wrong, and even if they were caught, they blamed Harry for it. It did not matter if he was at the other side of the room, he would still be the one punished for it.

He sighed, the anger that had flared up dying down again. Getting mad never did anything to help. No one cared. He was all alone, had been ever since his parents got themselves killed when they were drunk, and he did not know if they would have loved him even if they had lived. "Maybe it is all my fault," he muttered unhappily, a little bit of fear and doubt sliding down his throat to his stomach like a chip of ice. "Maybe they're mean to me and no one says anything about it because I really am a freak, just like they always say."

"I doubt that is the real reason, Harry."

He yelped in surprise at the voice that answered him and scurried away to slam his back into the wall. There, at the other end of his cupboard, sat a woman. That was the shorter end of his space, and he had no clue how she could possibly fit in there, especially since he had to look up to see her face. She was tall, with blonde hair hanging loose down to her shoulders, and her blue-green eyes held a faint spark of some emotion he couldn't identify. Her jumper was a light grey and looked incredibly soft, and she had well-worn jeans that made her look even more like she was just relaxing at home. His eyes went wide when he saw her feet; with her legs loosely crossed like that, he could see the polish on her toenails was not red like his aunt's, nor the blue and pink and yellow he saw on the fingers of the girls at school, but instead a glossy black. His aunt always said that only punks and harlots and freaks painted their fingers and toes like that.

But Aunt Petunia called him a freak, too. Was this woman like him?

Her lips twitched as she watched him watch her. How could he even see her, he wondered suddenly; the cupboard was dark, but somehow her end of the space was as bright as if the door were open and the sun was out. Examining her suspiciously, he realized that she was the most visible thing there while everything else looked like she was the one shining light on it. It might be faint, but she was _glowing_.

He took another, closer look at her face. Her hair was blonde, just like Aunt Petunia's, and though her eyes were a bluish-green while his aunt had washed-out green eyes, there was still some similarity in the shape. Add in the glow and the fact that she had appeared out of nowhere, and there was only one possibility that made any sense.

Clearing his throat, Harry asked, "A-Are you… my mum's ghost?"

* * *

**If your plot hinges on a deus ex machina, at least make it literal.**

**This should be the only chapter that requires such a hefty dose of **_**Dresden Files**_**–flavored theology, particularly since it's the only time I plan for a DF character other than Lash to have an appearance, but it was necessary to explain just how Lash got from Harry Dresden's world to Harry Potter's.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	2. First Lesson

**negligibleSanity:** Oh, there will be more Dresden Files lore thrown in, just not the theology. Since the HP world is so minimally described outside of Hogwarts, there are plenty of opportunities to build in similarities as well as differences.

**AGreatReader, Hoppy159:** To avoid getting _too_ spoiler-y, I will just say that the HP and DF worlds are different but the actual _magic_ is very similar in many ways. More of the potential mechanics issues are due to divergent cultures and how the wizards actualize magic rather than the magic itself, though this is going to cause problems all its own later on.

**I did my best, attempted everything I could think of, but now I must admit defeat. Try as I might, I can't make kid Harry anything less than adorable. Also, this chapter gets a little dense in terms of magical theory, just to let you know. I enjoyed it, but I might be the only one who does.**

**Disclaimer:** Were students taught in book 1 that a minor mispronunciation was enough to create a completely unexpected result (namely, the _'Wizard Baruffio'_ incident), even though that same book also had several instances of nonverbal casting? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 2  
****First Lesson**

The boy, Harry, stared unashamedly at her, and Lash smiled the faintest amount as she returned the favor. She knew all about him now, or at least all she could from the memories she had watched since he picked up her coin. That situation was a little odd; with Dresden, she had access to everything, but for some reason parts of this Harry's mind were barred to her. She could watch his whole life through his eyes and feel every emotion that flittered through him, true, yet while she could sense the stream of his thoughts, they were always just out of reach.

_Probably a restriction Uriel or He put on the coin_, she decided. It would hinder her a little, not being able to read his mind at will, but she had two thousand years of practice observing human interactions. Even with just his memories, she would be able to predict what he was going to do with a sufficient degree of accuracy.

Without warning, his panic and suspicion were suddenly drowned out by wonder and hope, and she admitted to herself that perhaps it would take a little more practice before she could do that with him. She certainly could think of nothing that would make him so happy. After being abused for as long as he could remember for the _'strange events'_ that followed him, she would have expected that he would dislike her sudden, unexplained appearance, not—

"A-Are you… my mum's ghost?"

What?

The surprising question startled a laugh out of her, and she shook her head, a wide grin growing. Perhaps this new restriction would not be too bad, after all, not if her host was going to provide her with amusements like this. His mother's ghost, really?

"No, Harry, I am afraid that I am not she. Whyever would you think that?"

The boy blushed and looked down. "Well, you look like Aunt Petunia, and you fit in my cupboard, and people don't glow, so… Sorry."

_Ah. Well, I suppose I should not expect adult thought processes from him just yet; he is only nine years old, after all. And perhaps there are some tiny resemblances between that woman and me_.

She leaned back and braced herself on her outstretched hands. At least, that was how what she was doing looked to Harry. 'Behind' her view of the world, perfectly reconstructed from Harry's memories of her surroundings and oriented to her position in space, lay a second layer, this one what Harry saw with the changes she was creating with her illusions highlighted for convenience. Behind that was yet another layer, much more abstract: a model of her projected body, complete with parameters that determined how she would look and sound and feel to him – and even smell and taste, should he ever wish to test her illusions in that much detail. Here was also where she ran the calculations to determine how far away 'she' was from different physical objects in case she wanted to appear as though she was manipulating them, as well as how fast she had to slide her avatar through visual space when she moved so she would appear to interact with the world realistically.

"Would you prefer I not look like your aunt?" she asked. "I would rather not be compared to her." Primarily because she wanted him to identify her as his rescuer, not associate her with the baseline humans who had abused him his entire life.

His eyes grew wide as saucers. "You mean you can look however you want?"

"Indeed." In a scant second, Harry's wide eyes were fixed on a perfect duplicate of himself, and then she had changed her guise to that of 'Shiela', the cutesy brunette she had appeared as the first time she interacted with Dresden. Interestingly, she knew she had other forms she could take, but they were… _fuzzy_, for lack of a better word. Distant, half-remembered. They were also, she suddenly realized, all forms that Lasciel had used, not she; perhaps that had something to do with it. All this flashed through her mind in the time it took to return to her original blonde form, and raising an imperious eyebrow, she prompted, "Well? What would you prefer?"

"Um… That's fine," Harry said after a moment of thought. "You don't look that much like her, after all." He cocked his head and frowned. "But who are you, anyway?"

"My name is Lash," she told him, and then a thought came to her mind. Why not? "And I am your guardian angel."

"You haven't been doing a very good job, then," he muttered, and then he clapped his hand over his mouth and stared at her with a panicked expression.

Lash smiled at him, the expression encouraging and maybe just a little feral. If she was supposed to leave this boy relatively intact rather than enslaving him to her will, the least he could do was keep that willfulness. It had always amused her when humans dared to talk back to her, one of the Fallen. Not to mention, it would be far more difficult to teach him to protect himself if he was nothing more than a broken puppet.

"Your prior treatment you cannot blame on me. I only started looking out for you this afternoon, when you picked up my coin." A hopeful look appeared on his face, and she raised her hand to ward off whatever he was going to say next. "And before you ask, no, I am unable to prevent any physical attempts to harm you."

He crossed his arms over his chest and pouted. "Why not? Doesn't sound like you make a good guardian angel if you can't protect me."

"That just is not part of my skill set. But"—she raised one finger and gave him a tiny wink—"what I can do is teach you to protect yourself. Learn all you can from me, and no one, not even people bigger and stronger and faster than Vernon, will be able to harm you ever again."

"Really?" he asked with eager eyes. "How? Some super-secret kung fu or something?"

"Nothing so mundane. No, I will teach you magic."

Harry frowned again. "But there's no such thing as magic. Uncle Vernon always says—"

"Do you want to know a secret about the Dursleys?" she asked, cutting him off before he could pound Vernon's tirades into his head any further. He nodded, the motion so fast it made his neck look boneless. She crawled closer, one finger slipping under his chin to raise his head high enough to look into her eyes, and whispered, "The Dursleys are small-minded fools. They are terrified of anything that isn't just like them, and because of that fear, they dismiss everything unfamiliar as unimportant or improper or imaginary. That is the reason they treat you so badly; they see the incredible things you can do, and when confronted by the choice to either see the world the way it really is or keep pretending that they know all there is to know, they happily stick their heads back in the sand. You are not a freak, Harry. You are _special_."

His eyes fluttered closed at her words, and he leaned the slightest bit into the thumb resting on his cheek. It was completely unintentional, she knew, but that just made it even more powerful. Humans had a deep-seated need to touch and be touched; their entire lives were based around it. Mothers nuzzled babies to tell them that they were protected. Friends hugged each other to affirm that their relationships were still intact. Businessmen shook hands to promote solidarity and cooperation. Lovers kissed to show how much they cared. Due to the Dursleys' actions, very few indeed were willing to touch Harry like she was, and she smirked where he could not see. If she was the only one willing to touch him unreservedly, then she was also the one he would look up to and trust the most.

It was underhanded, yes, but if Uriel were concerned with how she accomplished her task, he should have given more thought to putting such an impressionable mortal in the hands of a fallen angel.

"Do you want to learn magic, Harry?" she gently asked, wary of being too loud and destroying their little moment.

"_Yes_."

She pulled her hand back, causing him to exhale a sad sigh and open his eyes. "Good. Our first lesson starts now—" A loud rumble echoed through the tiny space, and Harry scowled down as his abdomen. "—and it looks like I know what it will be. How to unlock a door."

"Really? That doesn't seem all that special," Harry said in a doubtful tone, the act unable to hide the eagerness he was truly feeling.

"Perhaps it doesn't, but I have always preferred practicality to impressiveness. I could teach you how to create a stone out of thin air, I suppose, but that would do very little to feed you. Now, unless there are any _other_ complaints?" He shook his head sheepishly. "Then I will show you what to do. But first, I need you to give me control of your body."

Harry's eyes narrowed suspiciously. Good. "Why?"

"It will be easier for you to repeat what I am about to do if you feel it happening yourself rather than trying to work it out based on my descriptions. I will not need control for long." He thought about it for another moment before giving her a nod, and she let her illusion fall apart. Her soul wrapped tightly around his brainstem, and phantom pains ripped through her as her mind adapted to the confines of his body. Stretching a bit, she groaned as she felt his neck and back crack, the physical relief more immediate now that she was inside him rather than floating through the aether. She pressed her hand against the wood of the door, and with nothing more than the sheer force of her will slid the metal bar of the lock on the other side away.

The door drifted open.

A psychic quiver shot through Harry's limbs, and she forfeited her control rather than force him to dislodge her. It would not be difficult for him to do so, not when that was his body and not hers, and it would also damage the still-fragile rapport she was building. Harry stared at the sheet of wood in total astonishment, the most immediate barrier to his freedom dismissed as a mere inconvenience, and she manifested her avatar to sit on the edge of the table with her feet swinging unconcernedly under her. "_'There's no such thing as magic'_. Hah."

Another warning grumble made her roll her eyes. "Go fix yourself a sandwich, and we will talk while you eat."

"How did you do that?" he asked while flipping on the kitchen light and opening the fridge. "Besides just _'magic'_, I mean."

_Or I suppose we can just start the lesson now_, she thought with an amused shake of her head. "The actual mechanics of magic are… complicated. The exact process is different for everyone, mostly based on how one sees the world but also influenced by what his tutor does. To further compound the issue, angels effect magic differently than humans do. Not so much that I cannot teach you, but you will have to use many trappings that are pointless to me.

"That said, the best way I can describe magic is _'deception made true'_. For instance, let us say we have a blue ball." She created the corresponding image in her left hand, the trick distracting Harry from his preparations. "But we want it to look different." Here she made an identical sphere in her right hand, this one red. "What we have to do, then, is convince not just ourselves but the world that the ball is not blue but red, and when we do"—the blue ball changed color—"our will causes that to become true for a time. It will inevitably fade, just as it did with your teacher's toupee, but the change will still occur."

After a moment she let both illusions fade. "Now, there are a number of methods to do that, and depending on exactly what we want to happen, some ways will be easier than others. To continue with our previous example, we can change the actual color of the ball, which takes a great deal of focus and mental energy, or we can create an illusion so it merely looks like it is red, a much simpler task. Or let us imagine that we are knee-deep in snow and want a fire." Abruptly Harry shivered as she manipulated his sensation of temperature. "We could just create fire _de novo_, have it spring up from nowhere, but the energy that such a thing requires still has to come from somewhere. In this case, it comes entirely from your mind. Alternately, we can leech heat from our surroundings, making the rest of the world just the tiniest bit colder and pooling it all where we want the fire to be. As a rule, you should always pick the least expensive method of attaining whatever result you require. Only rarely will that be the _'brute force'_ method, and any psychic energy you save is energy you can use for something else later."

She released that illusion as well and grinned in response to his confused expression. Perhaps she had gone a little deeper than he was ready for; not even Dresden, a fully trained and 'professional' wizard, had tried to comprehend his abilities to quite that extent. "Do not concern yourself overmuch with the details. As I said, ultimately the way each person approaches magic is unique, so you will come to an understanding that best suits you personally. Besides, once you get comfortable with using magic, you will not pay much attention to exactly how you are doing what you want except under very rare circumstances. It will all be subconscious by that point."

"Oh, good." He finished putting his dinner together and sat down at the chair next to her. "So if I don't have to worry about what's going on, what _do_ I have to do?"

"That is where our situation gets a little sticky," she warned. Throughout the day, she had been wondering just how to introduce the subject, mostly because there was one tiny complication she had noticed. "Most of the wizards I know first started coming into their abilities when they were in their early teens, but you have already begun to express your magic. Normally that would be a good thing, but you also feel weaker than many of them. Some of that might be due to your age, meaning you could become stronger as you transform into an adult, but I do not know for sure. Therefore, we will have to progress slowly, and we might have to play it by ear in a few situations.

"As for the process itself, humans need three things to manifest their magic. First is intent; this is what you want your magic to do and how you plan to accomplish that goal. It is the most important step in the process. Second is emotion, which acts as the 'fuel' for your spell. Any emotion can be used, and while more experienced wizards generally tap into their resolve and determination, novices often find stronger emotions like joy or fear to be easier to work with." Rubbing her chin, she thought back to all the incidents of magic he could remember. "For you, I would recommend starting with anger. That seems to be a common theme in your own history. The third element is an incantation. That serves to insulate your mind from the power you are wielding, both to keep you from casting a spell unintentionally and so your brain won't boil in your skull from energy overload. That is not something I think you want to experience," she said to his grimace of disgust.

"No, not really," Harry answered, and he stared at the sandwich in his hand for a moment before setting it back down and pushing the plate away. "So I have to get mad and then say the magic word, and whatever spell I want happens? No, you said the intent is most important, so it would come first. Or was it the words?" The boy blushed and looked up at her. "Could you run through it again?"

Lash sighed and shook her head. Right, he was just a boy. Perhaps a visual description? That thought bounced around her head for a moment, and she nodded. Humans who best tapped into anger as their emotional primer generally responded well to metaphors rooted in violence. Her hand curled around the massive revolver that appeared from nowhere, and Harry's eyes grew wide. "Casting a spell can, in some ways, be compared to shooting a gun. First, you decide upon your intent. That is like loading the bullet." She held up the illusionary round and slid it into the chamber, then closed the cylinder. "Your anger is the trigger; without it, your spell will not fire. To keep the gun from going off by accident, there is a safety you have to switch off before you shoot.

"So, to cast a spell, what you have to do is load your intent, take aim, speak the incantation, and then tap into your emotions." As she spoke, she pointed the gun at the back wall of the kitchen, flipped the safety, and pulled the trigger; the loud _boom_ made Harry jump out of the chair and press himself against the wall next to the table. She rolled her eyes and said in a comforting voice, "Have no fear, this is just an illusion. No one heard it but you. Do you think you can remember that now?"

"Y-Y-Yes," he squeaked.

"Excellent. Finish your dinner, and then you can start practicing."

Harry hastily ate the rest of his paltry meal and washed the plate, and they walked over to the door of the cupboard. He pushed it closed and slid the lock home, then he glanced up at her again. "This incantation… Is it just _'open'_ or something?"

"No, it cannot be in English. It needs to be sufficiently unique so that you will associate it only with the spell in question and thereby provide you a buffer, otherwise you run the risks I mentioned earlier. Theoretically, it could just be a sting of nonsense syllables, but it is far more common – nearly ubiquitous, in fact – to use words from another language." Lash hummed to herself, sorting through the multitude of tongues she spoke. It would need to be one he would never have any need to speak; that had caused Dresden numerous problems over the years, as he had chosen Latin for his magical language only to later need it for conversing with the White Council. Something uncommon, isolated, with few if any cognates in English… Ah, that would work. "For this, use the incantation _Bats'vel_. Yes, I will tell you what it means," she said when he turned to her, curiosity running rampant in his mind, "but only after you can successfully cast the spell. Consider it a reward of sorts. Once you can do that, we will work on locking it again so no one will ever know that you got out."

The reminder that this needed to be hidden caused him to glance up the empty stairwell, but once he was satisfied that the Dursleys were not going to come pounding down the stairs to stop him, he turned back to the lock. Lash watched him attempt the spell a few times, and when he did not achieve any immediate results – not that she expected him to – she rocked back and forth on her heels and started thinking on just what she would teach him in the coming months.

With him being as weak as he was, she would have to avoid the more energy-intensive spells, at least until she had the opportunity to teach him how to create foci to lessen the mental load. That meant none of Dresden's favorite spells, conjuring fire and lightning and wind, but Harry had little use for battle magic at the moment, anyway. Both those factors also applied to large-scale illusions, too, though minor tricks should not be too difficult for him to master. Potions and most aspects of thaumaturgy would require materials they did not have just yet.

No, she would have to start him off with little cantrips and move on from there, though that was not necessarily a bad thing. The weakest abilities were often the most useful; unless Harry decided to make a living standing against supernatural foes the way Dresden did, how many opportunities would he have to fight? Conversely, unlocking doors and lighting candles and finding lost items were less impressive but of far greater utility. She would cover all aspects of magic to discover which he had the greatest talent for, of course, but—

"A little irritation isn't enough to make the world obey your whims!" she yelled, jerking Harry out of his little pouting episode. He was an adorable kid, but honestly, could he not have just a tad more self-discipline? "You need real _anger_ if you want this to work. Think about how mad you were when Piers stole the homework you were supposed to hand in to your Mr. Pittman and he gave you a zero for it even though he had seen it on your desk! Or how Petunia wanted you to wear that ridiculous sweater to school, knowing full well that you would be laughed at!" Just reminding him of those instances caused his anger to surge, and she nodded and left him to his practice. She would need to get him comfortable with casting magic quickly, if only so he could become skilled enough to use resolve as his impetus. For all that his magic to date had primarily been induced by anger, she could already tell that he was horrible at holding a grudge.

_Well, that is something else I can fix once he has the basics down. It is not as though we lack the time_.

* * *

The sun was just beginning to shine through the kitchen windows when Lash finally called a stop to the lesson, and Harry sighed in relief. For all the help she had given him, she had forgotten to say just how tiring magic was. He felt like someone had pulled his brain out of his head through one ear, wrung it out like a wet dishtowel, and then shoved it back in the other. At least he was only worn out mentally; his belly had grumbled several times through the night, and Lash had not minded at all when he took a break for a snack.

If he had any doubts that she was his guardian angel like she claimed, they were now gone. Only an angel could be this nice.

"I think you almost have it," Lash said from where she was leaning against the wall. His face glowed from the praise. "Locking a door is not too different from unlocking it, at least not from a purely physical standpoint, but there is a different _meaning_ to it, and that, I think, is where you are still stumbling. You should have it figured out the next time we work on it."

"When will that be?" he asked, his enthusiasm still enough to make him bounce on his feet a little. Magic was definitely the most interesting and fun thing he had ever learned; even if the Dursleys weren't afraid of it, he could almost see why they would want to keep him away from the subject.

"Well, your school is out for the next couple of weeks, so I suppose we could continue as early as tomorrow night," she drawled with a faint smirk, and he dashed forward to wrap his arms around her in a hug. If only she had some magic to make time go by faster, everything would be perfect! "Now, if you will cede me control again, I will lock the door behind you this time. I do not think letting Vernon know that you can escape whenever you wish is the best idea just yet."

A shiver raced down his spine at that thought; if his uncle realized he could do that, things would not end well. He nodded, and Lash vanished while his everything started itching, as if thousands of ants had been dumped on top of him. His body moved without him, no less odd than it had been the first time, and he crawled into the cupboard. The door slapped closed and clicked, and then he was once more alone in his own skin. Looking around the tiny space to find he was the only one there, he asked in a wavering voice, "Lash?"

"I have not abandoned you, never fear," her voice said. He still did not see her, but a faint breeze came from nowhere and ruffled his hair. "Get some sleep, Harry; you are going to need it. I will be here when you wake, tomorrow and the next day and for as long as you will have me."

A bright smile appeared on his face, and he scrambled under the covers of his tiny cot and squeezed his eyes tight shut. Maybe this whole thing was a dream. Maybe it was just his brain trying to distract him from how his life was by fantasies of what it could be.

But if this was all a dream, he hoped he would never wake.

* * *

**If trying to picture how Lash views the world confused you, I have succeeded in my goal. That said, scenes from Lash's POV will only use that first 'screen' unless something very important happens that requires the others to be mentioned.**

**Anyone who has done some digging into the mythos of the Fate/stay series should recognize a couple of elements in Lash's lesson. Of the many, **_**many**_** TV shows, movies, and books I've read that featured magic, the Type-Moon franchise has one of the most detailed systems, so I'll be lifting a few things here or there for convenience. (Not to mention, I think that **_**'lie to the world'**_** philosophy would appeal to a fallen angel.) If you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry about it; it's not that important.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	3. The Dursleys

**xbox432:** Though the gun was partly a nod to _Fate/stay night_, I actually picked it more because that metaphor is easy to expand when Harry starts learning about foci, both those from Dresden's world as well as canon wands. That's going to get pretty funny before it's all over.

**plums:** Yes, the Dresden-verse is an alternate reality to the Potter-verse, not that Lash knows that yet. And I don't have any pairings picked out at the moment, nor do I know if they will ever pop up. There are going to be some… _issues_ regarding Harry and socialization in the future. (That's still no reason to diss on the Lunarry, though, especially as I like to think I've written her rather well in my stories!)

**Disclaimer:** Did the White Council originally insist on no one learning psychomancy under any circumstances, to the point that white wizards were all but defenseless against their darker brethren? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 3  
****The Dursleys**

In a rare show of generosity, Harry only had to spend three days in the cupboard before Uncle Vernon opened the door. "You better have learned your lesson, boy," he growled as he stomped away. "If I get another call from your principle about you climbing on top of school buildings, you'll get a right proper hiding, do you understand?"

"Yes, Uncle Vernon," Harry muttered, brushing a spider off his trainers and slipping them on. When he left the tiny space, the smell of cooking bacon drew him towards the kitchen. A half-full plate sat temptingly on the edge of the counter, and Harry took a quick glance at Aunt Petunia's back before reaching for a couple of pieces.

A wooden spatula swept down onto his wrist with a sharp _smack_, and he hastily pulled his numb hand back to his chest. "That's not for you," Aunt Petunia hissed, the gleam of the polished toaster explaining how she had spotted him. "You should be thankful we let you out already. You don't get to eat our food, too. Now out!"

Harry hastily retreated from the woman before she could deliver another punishing blow, though he was not fast enough to avoid hearing her muttering. "Should have just sent the brat to an orphanage. Would have been the best place for him, no matter what the old freak said."

_It wasn't like I asked for you to keep me_, he thought back as he walked out the back door, not daring to voice his own complaints. Many times Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had told him how terrible orphanages were and how grateful he should be that they were willing to take him in at all rather than sending him to a place like that, but honestly? He wondered if his life might not have actually been better at an orphanage. At least then he would have had a chance to be adopted by someone who would care about him and want him around.

"Did you know that the petunia is said to represent anger and resentment? Your grandparents must have had the gift of foresight."

His eyes shot up and immediately found the owner of that familiar voice leaning against the wall of the house. "Lash!" he all but squealed, jumping over to wrap his arms around her in a tight hug. She laughed and gently ran her hands through his eternally messy hair, the simple gesture one he was quickly coming to associate with his angel. Clamping his eyes shut, he squeezed tighter, as if to prove to himself that she was really there.

"Not too hard, Harry. I might break," Lash laughed. She vanished from within the circle of his arms and pulled him from behind into an embrace of her own. "Come. We have a great deal to do, and now that you may no longer sleep through the day, we will have to have part of our lessons in the sunlight."

He nodded, his silly grin still on his face, and once she let him go he reached out to grab her hand. A faint sound from inside the house caused him to look over his shoulder, and his gaze fell on Aunt Petunia. The woman was staring at him with her lips slightly parted, her eyes flicking back and forth between him and Lash. Strangely, however, she did not look up at Lash's face, instead fixing her sight around the angel's belly.

A wince crossed his face as he realized how this would certainly end. The Dursleys did not like him dealing with anyone they had not already vetted as thoroughly normal, and Lash, dressed as she was in a white toga and Greek-looking sandals, definitely did not fit. He glanced up at Lash, his worry mounting, and then his mouth dropped open when he saw what she was doing.

His guardian angel was sticking her tongue out at Aunt Petunia!

Pulling her tongue back in her mouth, she gave him a sharp smile. He was already coming to recognize that expression; it was the same one she always wore when he asked her a question that was wide off the mark, the one that taunted, _'I know something you don't'_. "What are you waiting for, Harry?"

"Nothing. It's nothing," he muttered. Tugging her toward the street, he waited for as long as he could before asking, "Why didn't Aunt Petunia get mad at you for standing there with me? Do you know each other?"

"Not in the slightest," came her dismissive answer. "As for why she was not upset, it is for the simple reason that she has no idea I was even there."

"What?! But how? I mean," he looked again at her outfit, "you aren't exactly hard to spot."

The tinkling sound of her laugh caused him to relax; and here he had been worried he would offend her with that observation! "Ah, but you are making a faulty assumption." She raised one finger of the hand that was not clasped around his and wagged it at him. "I am _your_ guardian angel. That means I may be neither seen nor heard by anyone but you. Of course, that also means you must be careful when you speak to me, else someone might think you are losing grip of your sanity and try to send you to a mental institution."

He paled and gulped. That did not sound like something he wanted to experience. "But you'd still be there, right? And you could get me out if I gave you control of my body again?"

"I would and I could," she agreed with a nod, "but escaping would be the easy part. Staying one step ahead of the manhunt that would inevitably be organized? Far more difficult. Best we avoid that potentiality entirely.

"So, show me around this place," Lash said, not even trying to hide that she was changing the subject. "I have only seen Little Whinging in your memories, and that is a far cry from visiting it in person. Where are the good places to go?"

"Well…" Actually, there weren't that many places to go, now that he really thought about it. The Dursleys never cared where he went so long as he was not in their sight, so he had wound up wandering and memorizing the various roads of this particular suburb many years previously. Unfortunately, every street was just like Privet Drive: identical houses with identical yards filled with identical people doing identical things. "Is everywhere like this? Just the same thing over and over?"

She did not seem to mind the unexpected question. "I have long felt that way about mortals. Oh, occasionally there are interesting individuals, and larger settings will have more subpopulations, but on the whole? Any given human is interchangeable with another."

"Do you think the same way about me?" he asked in a tiny voice.

"Objectively? I do not know yet if you are one of the truly unique individuals or not." Looking down at him, she gave him a comforting smile. "But you are certainly special to me personally. I suppose that does not give you much peace—"

"No! I mean, it does," he added shyly. He did not want to be too obvious about it, just in case she thought him clingy and showed herself less often, but it was nice to know someone cared. He had never had that before. "Is there anywhere special you want to see? There isn't a whole lot to do around here."

"I suppose not. How about… Yes, how about the shed?"

"The shed?" he repeated blankly. "It's just an old building that whoever used to take care of the park kept his stuff in. Nowadays it's empty and rundown. Why do you want to go there?"

She quirked an eyebrow at him. "Because it features so heavily in your memories. I am not permitted to hear your thoughts, but I do know that you feel a great deal of affection and comfort when you are there. I am merely curious as to why."

"Oh. That makes sense." Harry nibbled on his lip for a few moments while Lash walked silently beside him. "I guess it's just because I hide from Dudley a lot there. There's an old deadbolt still in the door, so I can get away from him and his gang and lock them out. Sometimes I stash things there that I don't want Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia to know about, but Dudley normally finds out sooner or later and tells them anyway."

"I see," Lash muttered. After a another couple of steps, she asked, "Out of curiosity, why have you never tried to run away from them before? I know of nothing that would hold you there, and many in your situation would have at least given it a chance. Perhaps you might have pulled it off."

He frowned and thought about that. Why hadn't he run away? He had definitely thought about it, but he had never gotten up the nerve to try it. "I guess I've just always worried that it would be worse outside Little Whinging than it is inside. And don't you need lots of money to live on your own, for food and a flat and stuff? I don't have that, and no one would hire a kid."

"You would be surprised, and even if not, there are ways to get around that requirement," was her vague reply. "But that does make sense. Proper planning is essential for success in your ventures, and I am glad that you have already learned that lesson."

It took them just a few minutes to reach the park, and from there they wandered to the small copse of trees at one end that surrounded the shack. The building was decently sized for its intended purpose, a square room eight feet to a side with a few shelves still hanging from the walls. Looking it over, Lash nodded. "Yes, this will do nicely."

"Do for what?"

"When we go through your lessons during the day, we will need somewhere you can practice in private. The Dursleys already know about your magic, and I really do not think you need reveal it to anyone else here." Paling, Harry shook his head desperately. "Additionally, some of the things I plan to teach you require physical components or ingredients, and those will have to be stored when they are not needed."

"But how will we make sure no one else comes in and finds them?" he prompted. "Dudley knows I come here, and if he saw anything frea— _magical_," he hastily corrected at Lash's displeased glance, "he'd run home and tell Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia."

She smiled down at him, her previous irritation already gone, and ruffled his hair. "You will be able to keep your secrets by the time we need to store things here, never fear. Until then, you just let me handle it, all right?" Sitting on the floor, she motioned Harry to join her. "Now, so far we have covered locking and unlocking doors, as well as levitating small objects. Those are all applications of kinetic energy, and while that is a very versatile force, it is also easy to harness. Today we are going to use something more difficult, namely light. We will start with creating a simple ball of light, and from there we will move on to…"

* * *

Five days. That was how long her patience lasted.

For as long as she could remember, Lash had worked through clever deceptions and subtle manipulations. She would seduce whoever her host might be, whether it be through satisfying his lust for knowledge or flesh, and then use that advantage to bend him to her every whim. The prideful and the curious were without doubt her easiest and most common victims, though she had at some point or another preyed upon those beset with every sin imaginable. Innocents were very rarely her target, but all the Denarians had occasionally taken children as their servants. Subverting her current host should not have been a problem in the slightest.

However, she had a different goal now, and she was discovering the difference in mindsets that required was causing her a number of problems. She _had_ worked alongside a mortal as an equal before – twice, in fact – but the last had been slain by the wielder of Esperacchius in the twelfth century. Furthermore, both of those mortals had been exceptional in magic as well as wisdom, neither of which Harry could yet rival them in. He was just a child, and while that denied him the attributes she could respect, it did leave in their place a pliability she had not many opportunities to experiment with. The boy was a lump of clay, unformed but by that very nature full of potential.

If she played her cards right, he could become anything she desired. All it would take was a gentle, guiding hand.

That gift was also a major source of frustration, not because of anything Harry had done but instead due to his environment. Lash was no stranger to memories of abuse – those who had been victimized were often more than happy to accept the power she could offer them – but currently the Dursleys' behavior was aligned against her purposes, not with them. If Harry was going to defeat his destined adversary, he needed a strong resolve, something the irritating mortals he lived with were intent on denying him. They had been degrading his will for years with isolation, derision, and the occasional bout of casual violence, and if leaving him meek and dependent truly was their end goal, they were succeeding admirably. Her own efforts to culture that independence were bearing some fruit, but every insult hurled at him by his so-called family only caused him to backslide once again.

_And that problem_, she mused, _would be so simple to solve were it not for these restrictions I am shackled with_. The first solution she conceived of would have been sufficient under any other circumstances: editing Harry's memory so he no longer recalled the pains and self-doubt they had inflicted. For some reason, however – perhaps because her 'sponsors' had not been quite so cavalier about her habits as she first presumed – that course of action had been barred to her. Each time she tried to tweak his memories, even the most innocuous changes, her grip on his mind had 'slipped', leaving her grasping at nothing. The same was true of his emotions, which was her second option. His self was defended in a way that she had never encountered before, and that on top of the matter of the Dursleys was sorely testing her composure.

_I cannot remove the memories of abuse, nor may I replace the associated anger and desperate desire for approval with apathy. How, then, am I supposed to remove these obstacles?_ After five days outside the cupboard and in the Dursleys' odious presence, she was seriously considering tempting Harry into something that would see him locked back inside where she could work on him without distraction. _And if I convinced him to flee this place, he would have to find some way of protecting his identity in addition to procuring life's necessities, which would run the serious risk of compromising my cover as an angel. What to do, what to do?_

_Harry's mind is inviolable to me, and I cannot remove him from this environment. So, since I have ruled out changes to his self and his setting, the next step would be disabling his opponents. Which would be so much simpler if I could affect anyone's mind besides Harry's. Unless_…

Now that was a thought. She had planned on teaching Harry a little bit of everything until she could discover where his true talents lay, and that should not be limited only to those magics the self-righteous White Council considered acceptable. The risk of corruption that supposedly came from violating the Laws of Magic was, in her own informed opinion, greatly exaggerated. Yes, holding others under thrall or killing with magic had in a few cases led to more and greater depravities, but those instances were few and far between relative to the overall number of trials, and it left behind a serious question. Was that escalation truly an effect of the magic itself, or considering that most warlocks were teenagers just discovering their abilities, were they merely relying on the limited skills they had already developed to evade the Wardens sent to execute them?

Personally, she felt it was the latter, and in demonstrable cases of 'corruption', it was the personalities involved, not the powers, that truly caused the problem.

Thankfully, unless Harry had within him an unknown thirst for holding dominion over others, this would not be a problem. A few instances of dark magic would not be enough to garner the Wardens' attention, even so close to their headquarters in Edinburgh, and in the unlikely case that it somehow did, they still would not be able to narrow the area down enough to find Harry.

Lash manifested herself lying down next to the boy on his cot, but before she reached out, she took a look at her current appearance. The toga had worked well with Dresden, but Harry was young enough that to him it simply looked odd. Over the last several lessons, he had given her strange looks when he thought she was not paying attention, totally unaware that she always knew what he saw and heard. Either way, it was an unwelcome distraction.

She frowned. _Perhaps something a little more modern? Something that a nine-year-old would not find too strange_. Another moment of thought had her garb changed for a dark pink set of pajamas, snow-white kittens gamboling over the fabric. "Harry," she crooned, gently shaking his shoulder. "Wake up. We have things to do."

"Mnrn mrah," was his sole reply as he rolled over and planted his face in her bosom, arms wrapping around her ribs.

"Fine. Or we can do it the faster way."

A line of icy cold streaked down his spine, and he sprang away and off the other end of the cot with a high-pitched yelp. She raised one hand to cover her smile when his head popped back up, a disgruntled expression affixed to his face. "Lash, did you really have to do that?" he whined.

"Maybe you should cooperate when I try to awaken you next time." His childish glare remained, and she shrugged her shoulders and chirped, "Very well. I _was_ going to teach you your first bit of impressive magic, but if you do not wish to learn it…"

"No, I do, I do!" He crawled back onto the cot. "What are we going to do?"

"Ah ah ah! There is a time and a place for that, and this is neither." She shook her head and translocated her avatar to a few feet behind the door, the illusion unseen but still audible. "Come along now. We are wasting moonlight."

He groaned and pressed his hand against the door, and she could feel the spark of anger that raced through him. Waking him up as roughly as she had might have been the best course of action, after all. "All right, I'm coming. _Bats'vel_."

Once his head poked out the open cupboard, she waved for him to follow and ghosted up the stairs. It only took a minute for him to follow her into the adult Dursleys' bedroom. "Lash?" he whispered. "What are we doing here? I could get in big trouble."

"That is something you will not have to worry so much about after tonight," she said. Beckoning him closer, she laid one arm across his shoulders. "Kinetic energy, light, and sound. Those are the forces you have begun to control, and you have done very well so far." His face glowed at the praise. "Because of that, I am now going to push you in a completely different direction. What you will be learning tonight is how to use purely mental energy to influence another creature. To wit, you are going to implant commands into the Dursleys so they will no longer be as hateful and hurtful toward you."

Harry stared at her with astonished eagerness; if any Warden had seen how excited he was at violating the Third and Fourth Laws of Magic, they would have murdered him on the spot. "Magic can do that?"

"Indeed. However," she warned, raising a stern finger, "this is not something that can or should be done impatiently or unthinkingly. Mind magic is a delicate and dangerous art, one you must give the proper respect even if it is not where your own talents lie. A hurried spell can break down, freeing your subject to do whatever he will, or morph into a compulsion that will make him behave in a way greatly different than you want. Sufficient time, a strong will, and a well-developed directive; those are the ingredients for effective psychomancy.

"For this situation, we have a few advantages. First, your relatives are nonmagical; this means they will not be able to counter your command once it is in place. Second, since they are asleep, they cannot leverage their wills to oppose your own, not to mention that it gives you all the time you need to decide what you want them to do. Third and last"—here she smiled—"you have me assisting you and showing you what to do. Other wizards who want to learn this skill require a great deal of trial and error, and most give up before they make it very far." Though admittedly, she was stretching the definition of _'giving up'_ a bit.

"Wicked." Harry turned his beautifully hungry eyes toward Vernon. That was the kind of interest she liked to see. "How do we do this?"

"I need your body first." A nod, and she filtered her essence through his flesh. She then spoke through his mouth, "For this kind of magic, anger is far from ideal. Confidence or determination is better, but probably the best emotional impetus is need, the raw _craving_ that can only be fulfilled by changing the way your subject views the world. Yes, that need," she told him as a potent desire filled him. "You will provide that to empower your intent to enter their minds. For now, observe." She placed the tips of Harry's fingers on Vernon's temples, the fat man still snoring away beneath them, and intoned, "_Nvachel_."

Their combined minds were bombarded with images and sounds, snippets of disconnected memories and fragmented dreams. She grabbed hold of Harry's psyche and pulled them away, slipping through the abstract spaces between the visions. Once free from the conceptual river, Harry's thought-self collapsed into a representation of his body, and she allowed her own avatar to congeal as well.

Harry took one look at her naked appearance, his cheeks flaming red, and then he crossed his hands in front of his pelvis as he realized he was in the same state. His eyes grew wide. "L-L-Lash? W-Where is…?"

"Ah." That was… unanticipated, though in hindsight it should not have been. "My apologies, Harry. Mental infiltration functions by interposing one's mindscape on top of the subject's, melding the rules of the intruder with those of the defender. In this case, we are both riding my mind, and so we are bound to the rules of an angel's mentality. As angels have no need for reproductive organs"—she waved a hand over her own sexless body—"they are, hm, _'edited out'_ might be the best way to phrase it. It is nothing to concern yourself with."

"How am I supposed to not be worr… Whoa."

A small smirk found its way to her lips as she turned her head to see what had surprised him so. Before them in the dark abyss floated a shimmering web spreading out in three dimensions, each thread thick as she was tall and composed of liquid silver and diamond dust. The web grew denser closer to the center of the array, and she reached out for Harry's hand before guiding them toward that mass. "I told you a moment ago that I was joining my mindscape with Vernon's, but that is not precisely true. Humans are extraordinarily malleable, and that means that unless they specifically train to defend their minds, they generally do not have concrete mindscapes of their own. In those cases, the intruder's rules are imposed in their entirety.

"These streams are the pathways Vernon's mind walks, memory and thought combined in arrangements only he truly understands. If all we wanted to do was learn more about him or discover what he was thinking about at the moment, we could parse through these trails in a few seconds and be done." Here she dipped her fingers into one of them for just an instant, gleaming ripples spreading from the point of contact. "On the other hand, if we were instead looking for a specific memory or datum, our search would be more intensive and would take longer. I have no way to predict how your own mindscape will manifest, but in here, the more central the memories, the more important they are to his sense of self. That core identity is our destination tonight."

She hastened their flight, pulling Harry close so she could make the sharper turns dodging the numerous thought streams at such speed required. Finally they were deep enough that they could not fit through the gaps between the strings, and she slowed to a stop. "Here is the center of his mind, the core of who Vernon Dursley is. Farther out, we can make minor tweaks to our hearts' content, but there is always the chance that they will be drowned out. Any alterations in this region of his mind, however, will cause permanent changes to his personality. As that is, in fact, our objective, we can begin. Do you remember what I told you about this type of magic?"

Licking his lips, Harry thought for a moment. "It's… delicate and dangerous?" he finally offered.

"Correct. For this reason, I want you to pay close attention, and even when you work on your aunt and cousin, we will still be doing so inside my mindscape so I can keep you from making any irreparable mistakes. Understand?" He nodded sharply. "Good. Now watch."

She closed her eyes, an unnecessary gesture as she did not need her sight to know what was before her, and spoke. "I will be gentle with my nephew. He does not do anything abnormal. Any strange occurrences around him have completely reasonable explanations. I will dismiss those incidents and think no more about them." Opening her eyes, she saw a few gleaming globules of thought hanging like bubbles of mercury before her. Harry stared at them in amazement, and she closed one hand around them to bring his attention back to her. "One of the tricks to making a strong compulsion is to phrase them as if your target was thinking them himself. Once you have them formed, inserting them is a simple matter. Like so."

Lash raised her arm and pitched the single sphere at the cluster, and it dropped into the shining rivers with a faint _plop_. "This is, admittedly, more difficult than I make it look, but I have been performing magics like this for millennia. Once you have your own mindscape set up and practice for a time, you will find it becoming simpler." She pulled them out of Vernon's mind, and the layers they had bypassed on the way in flew past them in a rush. The shock of being thrown into his body caused Harry to stumble back against the wall, and she was in turn ejected by the backlash.

"Well, that was unexpected," she muttered before reforming her avatar. "Are you ready to do it for yourself now?"

"I… think so," he said doubtfully. Harry turned uncertain eyes on Petunia. "Should I do it to her now, or…?"

"Perhaps it would be easier for you to start on your cousin," she allowed, walking out the door with Harry close behind. "As he is so much younger, he will have a more loosely defined sense of self, which should pose less of an obstacle for you to overcome on your first jaunt." Once they were in the boy's bedroom, Harry carefully tiptoeing over the various toys covering the floor, she prompted, "What commands are you planning to give them?"

He sighed. "I don't really know. For Dudley, I just want him not to bully me anymore. Maybe I could tell him to be nice to people?"

"No, you would tell him _'I am going to be nice to people'_. First person, Harry." He shot her a chiding glance, and she shrugged. "It is better that you learn good habits early. What about Petunia?"

"It's silly," he muttered, turning his gaze down at his feet, "but I want her to love me."

_That is just an exercise in futility and despair, my young host_. "I am sorry to tell you this, Harry, but that is not possible. There is only one emotion that cannot be manufactured or forced, no matter how much you want it, and it is love." Harry looked up at her with teary eyes, and she glided through the detritus on the floor to place her hands on her shoulders in a show of sympathy that she did not truly feel. She understood, at least to some extent, his sorrow; she still missed some of the angels she knew, those whose relationships with her prior to her Fall were similar to those commonly shared by mortal siblings. However, theirs were bonds forged through personality and shared experience. Harry, just as Dresden had done, was attaching importance to a matter of biology that had no influence on mental attachments, especially in this case where his aunt had proven by word and deed that she, at least, held no such misconception.

Lash would have applauded the mortal for possessing such good sense had Petunia not made her own task that much more difficult these past few days.

Though Harry ducked his head again, no tears fell, and already his unhappiness was being replaced with resignation. "I don't know why I thought it would be that easy. It's just… she's my aunt, Mum's sister. Shouldn't she love me?"

"I fear I cannot grant you a satisfactory answer, Harry. Bonds of blood are not something I have personal experience with." She slowly ran her hands through his hair. "But I promise you, even if you receive no love from her, there will be others who will be more than willing to give it to you."

He nodded, though doubt still filled him. "Even if I can't make her love me, I can at least make her care for me like she does Dudley, can't I?"

"That you can do. Rather than change her emotions, it is merely forcing some action upon her. It is also more reliable, which is the entire reason I gave Vernon the orders that I did," she explained. Even if it did come with additional side effects.

"Then… Then I guess that will have to do." Scrubbing his eyes, he walked the rest of the way to Dudley's bed and placed his fingertips on the obese boy's temples. Lash then rested her own hand on his messy hair. "You'll thank me for this later, Dudley. _Nvachel_."

* * *

"Do you want to go somewhere?"

Harry blinked in surprise and looked over at Lash where she was laying on her back in the snow. The park was empty, everyone staying inside in the warmth, but he still looked around before replying, "What do you mean? Go where?"

The angel shrugged and tilted her head to look at him, though the big sunglasses on her face meant he was not sure if she actually had her eyes open. He was still glad she had started wearing more normal clothes like when he first met her rather than that toga. Even if he was the only one who could see her, it was distracting when she looked so out of place. "Anywhere."

"We don't have any money to buy a coach ticket," he reminded her, "and while Uncle Vernon isn't mean to me anymore, I don't think he'd be willing to give me one just for a day trip." A shudder ran down his spine at the thought. It was good that Uncle Vernon was being nice to him for a change, or at the very least ignoring him most of the time, but it was still really, really weird.

"I was not thinking of using mortal conveyance." Disappearing and reappearing on her feet, something he was still not comfortable with even after eleven days together, she waved at him to stand as well. "There is another world, another Earth, that lies beside the human world. It is called the Nevernever, the land of the fae, and more relevantly, wizards are capable of opening paths – Ways – between the two realms."

"So you want to go to this Nevernever place?"

She shook her head. "Only for a short time. One of the benefits of using Ways to travel is that where in the Nevernever they lead is based on history, not geography. Step into the Nevernever and walk ten feet before opening a second Way, and you might travel a few yards or a thousand miles. It is a complicated place, but thankfully you have me to guide you." She smirked a bit. "I doubt any but the greater fae know the roads of Faerie as well as I do."

_That… could actually be really fun._ He smiled brightly. "Okay. When do we start?"

"Right now," she replied with a laugh. "Opening a Way is simple enough that you should be able to do it all on your own. You are pulling open the curtain between worlds, a thin barrier that poses no obstacle to you. Envision it, and then slide your hand down the length of the opening. The incantation is _'Darbas'_."

"_Darbas_." His finger moved through the air… and nothing happened. _Maybe I'm not mad enough?_, he wondered. Focusing on how unfair it was that he had to mess with the Dursleys' minds just to get them to treat him like a human being, that he had no one he could count on to care about him just because they were family, he swung his arm in empty air again. "_Darbas_!"

"Well, I suppose it might be too much to expect from you just yet," Lash finally said, though he winced at her disappointed voice. "You are, after all, still very young. I will guide you through it." He felt the tingling itch that signified his guardian angel taking possession of him, and his right hand slid smoothly in front of him. Nothing happened, and she waved his hand a second and third time, each a little faster and more frantic than the last.

She reappeared next to him and narrowed her eyes, first at him and then at the space where they were trying to make the Way. "This makes no sense. Even if you are too young to open a Way, I should have no problem with it. I have done it numerous times before."

Harry just shrugged. She was the one who knew all the magic; he had learned a grand total of five spells so far, six if they could get this one to work.

"What could possibly be causing—" Lash whirled around to point at him. "_You_."

"Me?" he squeaked. What did he do?!

"You teleported from the ground to the top of the school. I had not given it much thought, but I have never heard of any wizard possessing a spell like that." Pulling her accusing hand back, she cupped her chin. "I wonder… Perhaps it is a personal skill, one that interferes with opening a Way? It would certainly be more convenient for moving around the mortal world, but it would also mean you have no way to barter with the fae. Unless you can jump between the realms, too," she added in a mutter.

"…I have no clue what's going on."

Lash waved a hand in front of her face. "The exact mechanics are unclear at this point; we need to test it out. Harry, can you remember what you were thinking right before you performed that feat?"

"I was… I was trying to get away from Dudley," he said, squeezing his eyes shut to see it a little better in his mind. "I saw the dumpster in front of me and knew I was in trouble unless I could get away somehow. And then I spun around and… and wanted to be somewhere safe."

"Intent to get away. Fear for the fuel." She nodded. "We can work with this, especially if it can run off abstract destinations like that. Harry, I want you to think of a place. The details do not matter, but this needs to be an interesting, magical location, one filled with beings who look like humans but are too beautiful to ever _be_ human. Can you do that for me?"

_Picture a place with beautiful people. Got it_. Unbidden, his mind turned to the dirty magazines he had found hidden in the park's shed when he first looked inside it, and then to Lash, who was certainly the most beautiful person he knew. He shook his head and focused again on what his angel wanted him to do.

"See it, will yourself there. _Need_ to be there. And then say—"

"_Darbas_."

For a brief instant, nothing happened, and Harry thought he had done it wrong yet again. Then the air around him collapsed, squeezing him so tight he thought his innards were about to pop out of his mouth. His head was being crushed, his bones were breaking in his skin, there was no air in his lungs and he couldn't breathe and oh god he was going to die—

A thunderclap deafened him as glorious air returned, and he had just a second to see a small blonde girl jump up and scream before darkness covered his eyes and he fell to the ground.

* * *

**There's something highly disturbing about Lash's scene. I just can't put my finger on it…**

**Silently Watches out.**


	4. Toulon

"**Black magic corrupts because you have to believe you have the right to do it for it to work":** I'm going to be arguing with you guys for the next ten chapters about my dismissal of the whole "corruption" aspect of black magic, aren't I? As for this particular point, I have three problems with it, one Doylist and two Watsonian. First, when that idea was introduced in _Dead Beat_, I immediately thought it an uncharacteristically clumsy attempt on Butcher's part to make sure we knew that necromancy was _**BAD**_, and that opinion did not change in the slightest when he repeated it in regard to Molly's actions in _Proven Guilty_, especially since her attitude could just as easily be explained by her being a headstrong teenager. Coincidentally, I have the same issue with Rowling attributing Harry being so angry and angsty in book 5 solely to Voldemort's influence.

Second, think about what that line really says: a wizard has to believe the magic he's doing is right for it to happen. Any time he lights a candle, he has the right to command fire to appear from nowhere in violation of physical laws. When he creates a circle, he has the right to cleave out parts of the world as he wishes. Once Dresden gets Soulfire, we are supposed to believe that this normally pretty level-headed guy truly believes he has the right to order around _the very force of Creation_ to achieve his personal goals. At that point, it seems like it would be a prerequisite for all wizards to have rampaging god complexes, and while there are enough arrogant wizards in DF that you probably could make a decent case for it, I'm fairly sure that is not what Butcher had in mind. Instead, in my headcanon and in this story, what magic really needs is a focused intent without fear or self-doubt, which fulfills the purpose of his condition without introducing the same psychological implications. Dresden's statement can then be attributed to White Council propaganda he absorbed while training under Ebenezer McCoy.

Third, let's think about Ebenezer some more. You know, the Blackstaff, AKA the man the White Council itself gave the authority to violate the Laws of Magic at his own discretion and totally without oversight or punishment. If black magic really did corrupt everyone who used it, would this position ever exist? No, it wouldn't, therefore we can conclude that corruption is not nearly as dangerous as the White Council makes it out to be to their average members. And as Anastasia Luccio noted in _Turn Coat_, chapter 28, "The Laws of Magic are not about justice. … They are about restraining power".

**AGreatReader:** While the White Council did eventually allow its members to enter other's minds for the purpose of strengthening protections, this change came late in the war against the Red Court. At the time of _Dead Beat_, that was still considered against the Law and the average white wizard's mental defense was mediocre at best, as explicitly stated by Corpsetaker during his/her first fight with Dresden. And as I don't recall anywhere in the books where the Sight was said to reveal corruption, I really need a reference before I can take that claim seriously.

**GERGE:** We'll get to the canon timeline in 4-5 chapters if we include this one. Fair warning to you and everyone else, they might feel a little filler-ish since it'll all be original content and the purpose is for Harry to explore just what he can do, but I guarantee that all the mini-adventures he has will be referenced again after he gets to Hogwarts.

**Disclaimer:** Did Harry, who knew practically nothing about Veela, assume Fleur was a quarter-Veela after hearing about only one of her grandparents? If so, own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 4  
****Toulon**

Daylight streamed into Harry's eyes, and he blinked a few times to clear his vision. The ceiling high above him was not the top of the cupboard he was so familiar with, but he was slowly becoming accustomed to seeing the ceiling of Dudley's second bedroom, the room the Dursleys had given him as his own the day after he and Lash mucked around in their—

Wait. This wasn't that ceiling, either.

He bucked and tried to sit up, but someone had tied his wrists and ankles to the posts of the bed with thick black ropes. They had left his glasses on, thankfully, but right now all that did was show him that he was trapped, even if the white-sheeted bed and the desk at the other end of the room looked completely normal otherwise. How had he gotten himself in this mess?!

"_Vous êtes éveillé!"_ The siren's song called to him, and his neck cracked as he whipped his head toward the open doorway. A vision, an angel, stared back at him. She was the cutest girl he had ever seen; even Dudley's friends, all of whom thought girls were infested with cooties, would have agreed if they had the chance to see her. White-gold hair flared behind her, wind calling itself into being just for her, and her big blue eyes glittering at him created all sorts of soft and squishy feelings in his chest. "_Maman se fera un plaisir de l'entendre. Elle et Tante Clarisse m'a dit de ne pas venir ici parce que vous pourriez être un esclave, mais maintenant que vous êtes hauteur, je sais qu'elle va vous laisser aller._" A pink blush spread across her cheeks, and he wondered why people on the telly bothered talking about how beautiful sunsets were. "_Elle était juste inquiet, vous savez._"

"Looks like someone has a crush."

That sing-song voice, positively dripping with mocking humor, jerked him out of his thoughts. Lash appeared next to the girl, dressed in the same white skirt and yellow blouse his captor was wearing. And the outfit truly was identical; she had de-aged herself to be eight or nine just like the stranger, though it was still obviously her. "You should have told me that you wanted me a bit younger. I would be happy to oblige."

He averted his eyes and blushed, embarrassed. "Lash, please don't look like that. It's weird."

"_À qui parles-tu?"_ the girl asked. Harry risked a quick glance and found her looking at Lash, or more likely the otherwise empty space Lash was standing in. She turned those enchanting eyes on him again, but this time he was prepared for her… whatever it was, and it faded away to nothing more than a minor ache in his chest. "_Êtes-vous fou? Maman dit toujours les êtres humains sont tous fous, mais je ne l'ai jamais rencontré aucun._"

The expression he turned on his real angel was pleading. "What is she saying?"

"_Je vais dire Maman vous êtes éveillé._ Maybe she'll know what to do with you." After delivering that rather chipper threat, she turned around and skipped out of the room. He gulped in fright; what had he gotten himself into?

Lash walked toward him, flickering back into her regular form and now wearing a yellow sundress, and once at the bedside she quirked an eyebrow. "I did not realize you were into bondage, Harry, and at such a young age, too. Tsk tsk."

"I don't even know what that means!"

"Oh, you will find out in time," she returned, her too-wide smile telling him that he was better off not knowing. "And when you do, I will remind you of this day."

He groaned. "Just untie me already. Let's get out of here before she comes back." Though that would require him to go back into that lifeless void and let it to crush him into nothing and… Maybe he should let Lash drive this time around.

"There is no need to concern yourself so," the angel said. "She was merely babbling, and now she has gone to get her mother to untie you."

"Why was I tied up in the first place?! And why didn't she talk to me in English until the end?"

"Actually, she did not speak to you in English at all. I merely translated it for you. All it requires is suborning the language portions of your brain and running your speech through my own mind before returning it to you. I wish you could experience it; it is a decidedly curious sensation," she said in a thoughtful voice. Apparently picking up his cautious excitement, she added, "And yes, I can give you my fluency in French if you wish. As for why you were bound… Some people thought you were a thrall. The only question is whose."

He looked blankly at her. "And a thrall is?"

"A slave, but of the mind rather than the body. Imagine doing what you did to the Dursleys, but instead of making them better people you commanded them to fulfill your every desire without concern for their own safety or that of others. _That_ is a thrall," she said, nodding at his grimace. "If you forget everything else I ever teach you, remember this: all magic, no matter how benign it may seem initially, can be used to harm others.

"Someone approaches, likely the child's mother, so listen carefully. While it is not true to say that everyone has an ulterior motive for everything they do, enough do for it to be a good rule of thumb nonetheless. Say enough to satisfy their curiosity but not so much that you reveal your secrets, and if you are going to lie, make sure at least half of it is true."

Before he could ask her what she meant by that, a woman poked her head through the doorway, her features nearly identical to the little girl's. "I see my daughter was telling the truth, after all. We were not expecting you to wake for another day at least."

"Who are you?" he demanded, though the quiver in his voice meant it sounded far less brave than he had hoped it would. "Where am I?"

"There is something you must do first." The woman's eyes narrowed, and her left hand strayed toward the knife hanging from her belt. Harry's fear ratcheted further up, and he gave Lash a look that demanded help. "Tell me that you reject the vampires and their ownership."

"Vampires?" Next to him, the angel blinked before giving him a nod. Whether that was confirmation that he had heard the woman correctly or a signal to comply with her demands, he was not sure. _I suppose it can't hurt_. "Okay. I reject the vampires and their ownership."

The faint scowl on the platinum blonde's face vanished only to be replaced with a sheepish smile. "Sorry about that. I just had to be sure you were not enthralled. We do not get many wizards around her, especially not who use _Transplanage_ to sneak into my little girl's bedroom." She stepped closer and began fiddling with the knots.

Lash frowned thoughtfully. "I have never heard that word before. The closest translation I can come up with is _'ghosting'_, but I am by no means certain."

"As for your own questions," the woman continued, talking over Lash as though she could not hear the angel, "my name is Lisette, and the chatterbox who calls herself my daughter is Aimée. You are in a Veela settlement just outside Toulon, specifically in the guest bedroom of my sister's house."

He was where? "Veela?" he repeated, shooting his angel another look. After a moment's hesitation, she turned her incredulous expression away from Lisette and reluctantly shook her head.

Lisette stopped her work on the last cord and glanced up at him in surprise. "You have never heard of Veela? There are many of us in Lyon and Marseille, and even if you have never come to the south, it's hard to believe there are French wizards who do not know of us."

"I'm British, and I've only known about magic for two weeks," he apologized.

"British, yet there is not a trace of your mother tongue in your accent." Pulling the last rope free and motioning for him to sit up, she asked, "Who are you, young wizard?"

"Oh, my name's Harry Po—" Lash's frantic motion, her hand cutting across her throat, stopped him. "Er, yeah, just Harry. Um." Desperate to fill the gap his interrupted introduction had created, he asked, "Are you fae?"

"Fae?" Lisette laughed gently. "Dear child, you truly are new to the world if you think I'm a fairy. Do I look like I could be a decoration on a Christmas tree?" Still shaking her head, she walked over to the desk in the room and pulled the chair back to his bedside. "Still, you are much sweeter than the wizards we normally have to put up with. Cuter, too," she added with a wink that made him blush. "Perhaps it is a good thing you have magic; if you didn't, I would be tempted to keep you around until Aimée reaches breeding age."

Those two words chilled his blood. "…Breeding age?" _Lash, please tell me you mistranslated that._

"Oh, that will not be for several years yet," came Lisette's airy reply. "And as I have said, your magic disqualifies you. The sire of a Veela's first child is a powerful omen, and I would not have my daughter birth an Impure, let alone for her first."

Lash seated herself on the edge of the bed, not blocking his view of the Veela but still placed between them. "Have her explain what she means, and be ready to leave this place quickly."

He repeated the angel's command, though in a somewhat politer fashion, and Lisette gave him an apologetic smile. "Ah, forgive me. The Elders are the only ones who have dealings with wizards on a regular basis. Unlike humans, you will find no male Veela here; we bear only daughters, and so we rely on the males of your species to sire the next generation. I will spare you the details, as you are still a little too young"—Lash snickered at that, horrible, evil woman that she was—"but suffice it to say that we take great care in choosing our mates. It is important that we go out and find men without magic if we wish our children to be born Pure." Lisette's voice grew hard. "Human magic taints and dilutes our own, preventing our daughters from accessing the gifts of our ancestors. It reduces them to mere witches; beautiful witches, to be sure, but without the flames of passion or the wings that are our birthright. None of them are here, either. If the mothers of Impure wish to sully themselves with wizards, they can take their polluted stock and join them."

Harry stared as the woman's angry words caused her skin to crack and flake, white feathers lifting up around her eyes, and her mouth and nose began to squirm. Lisette took a deep breath then, the changes fading and a burst of the same aura Aimée had washing over him. It had even less of an effect on him this time, barely enough to make his heart race for a few beats, but despite that he could tell that Lisette's power was stronger and richer than her daughter's. She reached out and gave his hand a gentle pat. "Please do not think I look down on wizards, though. We have many allies among your kind, but as good of friends as you are to us, our bloodlines must be kept separate."

"You certainly seem passionate about this subject," he heard himself say, and a moment later Lash's wavering form stabilized. She never said she could do that, just take him over without him knowing!

"Sorry," she told him as soon as he thought that. Her expression was the most apologetic he had ever seen her wear. "That was wrong of me. I was… overeager. It will not happen again."

"I suppose I am," Lisette agreed after a moment of thought. "Many years ago, my favorite aunt mated with a wizard and birthed an Impure, and she was not remorseful in the least at being cast out. I am told she later even _married_ him, as if she were human! I do not want my kind to vanish; some theorize that if an Impure mates with a nonmagical man, she will bear a Pure, but to the best of our knowledge, such a thing has never happened."

Harry very wisely kept his thoughts on the matter to himself; there was no way he was going to say something that would invariably get his host upset at him, especially as she had already taken him prisoner once. And speaking of that… "When you said _'vampires'_, you were joking, right?"

"Not in the least." Crossing her arms and leaning back, the Veela thankfully aimed her acidic glare at the ceiling rather than him. "We and the vampires have been in conflict for… oh, several centuries. They fear us, you see; our fires sear them to the bone, and we are immune to their thralldom. For this reason they have tried to stamp us out, and while they have never managed to conquer even one of our settlements, they have still solidified their hold over Paris and the surrounding areas. But we will triumph eventually; of this I have no doubt."

"And these vampires… Are they like the stories? Drink blood, sleep in coffins, can't go out in daytime, burned by holy water, no reflection?" Seriously, of all the creatures from folklore that could be real, it had to be vampires?

Unfortunately for his sense of comfort, Lisette nodded. "I'm not sure how well this 'holy water' works, but yes, all the rest are true. I didn't know normal humans knew so much about vampires."

"Black Court," Lash hissed with a shake of her head. Her eyes when she looked at him were hard. "Harry, you are not going to go looking for vampires of the Black Court, especially a full scourge. Keep as far away from them as possible. Actually," she added, a frown crossing her face, "find out why these Veela haven't requested the White Council assist them. This is something the Council would be very interested in."

Once again, he had no clue what Lash was talking about, but he dutifully relayed the message. "Couldn't you ask the White Council to help?"

"Who?" Lisette shook her head and gave him a humoring smile. "I have never heard of such a group, but we don't need their help with this, anyway. Few Veela would accept wizards interfering in our feud, and we have held the vampires back for a long time." Changing the subject entirely, she asked, "How long are you planning to stay here?"

The memory of that ghosting… jump… thing hit him hard again. "I… I don't even know how I really got here," he whispered. A half-truth, just like Lash had told him to say.

"Well, I'm sure you will figure it out. Clarisse, my sister, said you're more than welcome to stay here until then; the only person who uses this room is our mother, and she hasn't visited much since she was named Elder of the Lyon settlement. Aimée!"

The little girl sheepishly looked around the corner. "Yes, Mommy?"

"What have I told you about lurking behind doorways where you're not supposed to be?" Lisette asked with a sigh of resignation. "Harry's going to be staying with your Aunt Clarisse for a little while. Can you show him around the town while we get things ready here?"

Aimée's smile shone like the sun, and Harry again had to fight through the wave of magic that brushed so enticingly against him. "Okay!" she chirped, sprinting over to the bed to grab his hand and all but drag him across the floor. "I'll introduce you to all my friends! We have so much fun, and they've never met a human, either, and they'll be so surprised and jealous that you're staying with us. We'll have so much fun!"

* * *

"You certainly are enjoying yourself, aren't you?"

Harry flushed and slowly looked up from his book to meet Lash's eyes. The angel was lying on her belly on his bed, her chin propped on her knuckles and her feet waving back and forth above her, but while her expression was not obviously displeased, there was something that told him she was not happy, even if she was not quivering in suppressed rage like the Dursleys did. "I guess," he answered tentatively. His eyes fell back to the page as though it would give him some advice on how to handle this, but all it did was tell the same story it had when Aimée first loaned it to him. "Everybody's been so nice."

"Well, as long as they are _'nice'_." The scorn in her voice made him wince. Squeaking from the bedsprings invited him to look up again as she rolled off the bed onto her feet, and rubbed her hands on the jeans she was wearing. She walked over to the desk, a faint frown marring her face, and bumped her ankle against the side of his calf; when he slid over, hanging half-off the chair, she settled down beside him and wrapped one arm around his shoulders. "I apologize," she sighed, pulling his head closer and resting her cheek upon it.

Despite the awkward positioning, he smiled faintly and relaxed a little. Clearly his angel was not too unhappy with him.

Unaware of or maybe just ignoring his relief, she explained, "I do not have an issue if you wish to move here; I am with you wherever you go, and our lessons may continue unabated. No, my irritation is for two other reasons. First, you made no preparations for such a move. All you have are the clothes on your back, and though wearing the same thing for three days has given you ample incentive to master a cleaning charm, you will need more than that. And then there is the fact that people will ask questions when you do not return to school in a few days, and there will be investigations and missing persons reports. Do you intend to spend the rest of your life in the Veela colonies, never venturing outside for any reason?" He shook his head in mute answer. "Then unless you want people who mean well but do not care about your complaints dragging you back to Privet Drive, that is a loose end we need to tie up should you decide to stay here.

"Second, and even more important, you are afraid."

"No, I'm not!" he denied. How did she know that?!

Lash left the seat and knelt in front of him, her hands clasped around his own. "You are; it is obvious even without listening to your emotions. The first time you used this ability, this 'ghosting' or whatever it is called, the sensations frightened you. That is understandable, even acceptable. What is not acceptable is that the fear keeps you from moving on. Every time you have tried to leave this place since, it has been half-hearted, and your silent desire not to feel that way again ensures that the spell fails. That is the real reason you have not returned to Britain, and we both know it."

"But I nearly died!" he yelled back. "It was crushing me, and I couldn't breathe! If I try it again, I'll die for sure!"

"Oh, my young student, you still have so much to learn." She shook her head. "This is _your_ magic, your will made manifest. Unless you intend to inflict harm upon yourself, the spells you work will not – _can_ not – hurt you. I once saw a witch cast a spell that created an airless space, and then she walked through it without a care; not because she had cast some counterspell upon herself, but because her spell was meant to hinder those who pursued her and she did not want it to affect herself. It is the same way with your teleportation. You will be completely fine."

"But why did I pass out, then?" he shot back.

She grimaced. "You crossed the English Channel. Running water disrupts magic, and that is certainly a great deal of it. The sheer distance likely did not help matters, either. Thankfully, there are ways to deal with this, but the best for your age and experience…" Looking down at their joined hands, Lash hummed a quiet tune, so soft that Harry did not know that she was even doing it. "Yes, I think that would be best. We need to make you a focus."

"What's a—"

"I will explain it later," she said as she cut him off. "We will need to gather the materials before we can do anything else. Foci are often forged of metal, which gives them greater durability, but wood works just as well from a magical perspective."

That didn't sound too hard. "So I just need to get a block of wood and start carving?"

"It is not that simple." Of course it wasn't. She rolled her eyes, and her finger bopped him on the tip of the nose, part gentle rebuke for his attitude and – if the faint smile was anything to go by – part teasing. "The wood we need has to hold power within it, and those trees are often hard to find. I, however, know where there is an abundance of them. Visualize this place, and then use your ability to go there. Do not fear; if you do not trust yourself, trust instead that I would not lead you astray."

"I would never think that," he told her, absolutely aghast. She was his guardian angel, the only reason he was not still locked up in the cupboard. How could she ever think he distrusted her?! She smiled and then, with a wink, vanished.

And the room changed.

Walls, bed, chair; all were gone. Instead he stood in the middle of a forest, ancient trees towering over him like giants and the sweet scent of pine filling his nose. Amid the birdsong and the gentlest breeze, he felt a tingling go down his back and into his arms, the same sensation as when Lash took possession of him but somehow less at the same time. "My magic is yours," she said with the whisper of the wind. "Come to this place."

_I will. I'm coming_. "_Darbas_."

For a second time, he felt the force of his teleportation try to crush him, and he shoved his fear down. Lash had told him that his magic could not hurt him, and then she asked him to trust her. Would he disappoint his angel like this? The swirling blur of color resolved into the same forest he had been aiming for, and his feet slammed heavily into the snow-covered ground. He had arrived.

"Where are we?" he asked, crossing his arms over himself to hold in the heat as best he could. He really should have grabbed his jacket before he left France, and wasn't that a strange thought, that he could now cross borders and enter whatever country he wished on a whim?

Lash stepped out from behind a tree, and even though she did not need it, she was wrapped up in a long dress of dark blue with white fur peeking out at the collar. She must just be trying to make him feel the cold. "Welcome to the Black Forest, Harry."

"The Black Forest? In Germany?" She nodded and sat on a fallen tree, patting the space next to her invitingly. Walking over to join her, he voiced the concern preying on his mind. "But what if we need to talk to someone to get help or something? Do you even speak German?"

She threw her head back and laughed, the sound ringing through the trees. "Oh, Harry. I watched the Tower of Babel fall, and since then I have walked the earth many, many times." Shaking her head, she ruffled his hair. "There are _exceptionally_ few tongues, ancient or modern, that I do not know."

Harry could believe that. She had already made good on her earlier promise, and the second time he awoke in Clarisse's house, he had been astonished at how French now flowed so fluidly from his lips. As a bonus, he could shift back and forth between the Parisian accent Lash had first given him and the broader-sounding Marseillais the Veela spoke with nothing more than a flick of a mental switch. He could even read the language as easily as if it were English!

"Now comes the hard part," she said, shaking him from his reflections. "Close your eyes and relax." He did so, or at least as well as he could when he was this cold. His discomfort abruptly vanished, but the feel of Lash's hand over his eyes prevented him from looking at her. "Your body is still losing heat; I have simply made it so you can no longer feel it. With how thin you are, you need to do this quickly.

"Focus on the feel of the magic around you. Not in your body; not in me, assuming you can even detect it. Reach out for the stern immovability of the earth, the playfulness of the wind, the plodding thoughts of the snow. Feel the sluggish march of the trees, how even in the cold and the dark they still will grow toward the heavens."

Squeezing his eyes tighter, he tried to imagine mental fingers reaching out to where he thought the trees were. Minutes passed, but no matter how hard he tried, he felt nothing. Finally he opened his eyes and looked at Lash. "I don't think I can do this."

"It is a difficult skill," she admitted. Grasping his wrists, she started rubbing up and down his arms. "But I know you can do it; you have done so already with the Veelas' auras, albeit subconsciously. Close your eyes again. Keep reaching out, but do not think so hard about it. Let it come to you while you think about something else."

"Like what?"

She was silent for a few seconds, mulling over his admittedly whiny demand. "Before I was sent to be your guardian angel, I knew another wizard. He was older than you, and no matter what he did, he always seemed to get wrapped up in some spot of trouble or another. Once, he was hired by an old Asian man he could barely understand to find some lost puppies, so he and his brother went out…"

Harry lost track of how much time passed with them like that, him with his eyes closed and Lash rubbing his arms and telling him story after story. A couple were scary in places, and one was so sad he was nearly in tears at the end, but most were funny. If her goal was to make him laugh, she succeeded, and then she would join in and the pine needles above them would echo them with their own delight—

"Lash," he whispered, awe filling his voice as he cut her off. "I think I got it."

For all that Uncle Vernon liked to rant about hippies and environmentalists, Harry thought he might understand where they were coming from now. He was not one with the earth, not exactly, but beneath his feet he felt every grumble of the rock, and all around him the trees joined in with their own dances of life and light. Impressive though they were, they were dwarfed by another presence. It hung around him, broader and deeper and somehow more delicate than everything around it, and wisps of shadows of that power clung to him and engulfed him.

Was this fearsome immensity the true strength of his guardian angel?

"Good. Very good. Now reach out and look for a tree. It will not be just any tree, but the one that calls to you the loudest."

She probably meant that poetically, he decided; this strange new _awareness_ of the world was amazing, but he drew the line at talking plants. Still, there was one that felt not just bigger but older, too, behind him and a little to his left.

Standing and stretching his legs, both of which had fallen asleep on him, caused his sense of his surroundings to fade, but he still remembered the general direction. They walked through the silent forest, just the pair of them, for five or six minutes before they reached it. Before them stood a withered tree with gnarled and leafless branches; thorns nearly as long as his finger poked out from the bark. Harry did not need to return to that sensitive state to know that this was the tree he was searching for.

"Yes, this tree has power," Lash agreed, drifting forward over the snow to run her fingers over some of the branches. "This blackthorn has weathered the fury of time and nature both, and even as it clings to life, it faces its inevitable end with dignity. Learn from this tree, Harry." She turned her face away from him, and her voice dropped until he had to strain to hear it. "All things die, but _how_ you die, as a free being or one enslaved to another's will? That makes all the difference. It is a lesson even angels need to be reminded of from time to time."

"Lash? Are you okay?"

She spun around to face him. Her cheeks were dry, her smile bright, but her happiness was the falsest he had ever seen from anyone. "I'm fine, Harry; just remembering a few things, that's all. Go ahead and call a piece of wood to you. You remember that spell, yes?"

"All right," he answered after a moment's hesitation. She did not look fine to him, but if she didn't want to talk about it, it really wasn't his place to force her into it. He was only nine, and if a however-old angel needed help, he definitely was not the best person she could turn to, though the second she did ask him for anything, he would gladly give it to her. She had helped him with so much, it would only be right.

Shaking away his thoughts, he turned back to the task at hand. He had no way of knowing where the wood was going to come from, and from his meager prior experience with the spell, he knew he would have to avoid getting hit. He had not quite figured out how to call things to him without them flying toward him at high speed. "_Zhamanel_."

Something cracked at the top of the tree, and he jumped out of the way as it shot at his head. A sliver of wood as long as his forearm stabbed into the ground and quivered menacingly. "Very nice," Lash said, and Harry nodded even though her praise meant nothing right this moment. It probably had something to do with his heart imitating a panicked rabbit's. "You will not need the entire piece for this one focus, but there are many other things we can use the rest for.

"Let us return to Toulon," she continued, running her eyes over him. "You are too drained to cross the Channel now, even with my power bolstering yours. Sleep well tonight, and tomorrow you can say your goodbyes to your new friends and go back to Little Whinging. We will start our work then."

* * *

Harry's hand landed on the door handle, and for just a second he contemplated telling the Dursleys where he was headed before shrugging his shoulders and walking out. When he returned to Privet Drive, he had been shocked and dismayed that none of his relatives had even noticed his absence over the past four days; compared to the teary goodbyes he had experienced in Toulon – Aimée, nearly inconsolable that her best human friend was leaving, had made him promise no less than five times that he would come back as soon as he could that summer – it was a great disappointment, and he wondered if he might not have been better served by staying with the Veela for a little while longer.

Sadly, that decision was already made, not to mention there was no way he was going to make the trip back to France this soon. Despite having Lash's power at his beck and call, he still nearly passed out, and after crawling into his own bed he had slept like the dead for a solid twelve hours.

Once outside, he made a quick stop in the Dursleys' garage and dumped almost all of Uncle Vernon's chisels and drills and things into the duffel bag he had found in the closet of his new room. Much like Dudley, Uncle Vernon had a habit of picking up some hobby or another and shortly dropping it when it became clear how much work it really took to get good at it; woodworking had been 1987's obsession.

Lash was waiting for him in the shed near the park, and he stopped to stare at the multitude of strange, angular symbols composed of yellow light floating above her head. "What are those?"

"The script of the Nephilim," she answered in a soft – dare he say reverent? – voice. "The magic of the land of Nod, a language not seen since the Great Deluge. All foci rely on runes such as these, and this set should do nicely for you."

He nodded and settled himself on the ground in front of her. Though she had proven that she could create any furniture she wanted, she seemed to prefer to teach either while walking around or sitting on the bare earth with him. "You still haven't told me what these focus things actually are."

"A focus is a tool to concentrate and control magical energies to a greater degree than your mind alone can accomplish, allowing you to cast your spells faster, more accurately, and more efficiently. While there are any number of them in the world, they generally work in one of two ways. Do you recall the analogy I gave you in our first lesson?" He nodded; how could he forget that? Even if the gun had been illusionary, it was still terrifyingly loud. "That metaphor can now be expanded.

"The first type, which we can term storage foci, do exactly as the name implies: they store a pre-prepared spell for release at a later time." A matchlock pistol, the kind soldiers from the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries would have used, appeared in one hand while a red leather bag appeared in the other, and she poured a black powder from the bag into the barrel of the pistol. "Storage foci have to be 'charged' or 'filled', either through a tiny drain of your magic or with energy similar to the spell they contain. This is the powder for the gun, and how effective it is depends entirely on how much power it holds."

The old-fashioned gun and bag vanished to be replaced by a sleeker, modern handgun. "Casting foci, on the other hand, work more like a gun with a magazine. The runes define the intent of your spell much as a magazine holds a large number of bullets. You will still need to feed it emotion with each casting, just like you would need to pull the trigger to fire a gun each time, but this way it takes far less concentration to use a spell. It is this second type that you will make today; a storage focus would only send you to Toulon while a casting focus will allow you to travel anywhere."

He nodded in understanding. That did sound more convenient. "What does one of these look like? A wand, a knife?"

"They have no definite form; the wizard I told you about yesterday preferred rods, staves, and other phallic foci—"

"Phallic?"

"Resembling an erect penis." She grinned at his embarrassed blush. "It is a condition you will become intimately familiar with in the next few years."

_Will she ever get tired of teasing me?_, he wondered. He liked her jokes to some extent – no one else had ever been willing to do so with him – but her wicked sense of humor was all the explanation he needed for why she had been demoted to looking after someone like him.

"As I was saying. For this focus, you will make a ring, though you will first practice carving the runes on the scrap wood I asked you to gather." She leaned back and braced herself on her hands. "I actually prefer rings and bangles to rods, and not just for aesthetic reasons. Rods do provide a small benefit to aiming, which is useful for spells oriented around combat, but they are also obvious. Not only will everyone know that you are carrying a focus, but whomever you aim at will know they are the target. But a ring?" Lash raised her right hand, light glinting off a silver ring that he wanted to think she had just created but that had probably been sitting in her finger throughout the conversation. "Very few people pay enough attention to notice before it is too late."

Hundreds of the symbols above Lash's head vanished, leaving only a dozen behind, and they swiftly rearranged themselves into a line. "This is the description, as best as I can determine, of your teleportation. As you carve them correctly, I will explain what they mean, and only when you can write out the spell accurately multiple times will we work on the wood you called in the Black Forest."

With a sigh, he pulled out the tools he had borrowed and began copying the symbols onto a branch he had picked up on the way. Magic was rewarding, he would never deny that, but why did it always have to be so time-consuming?

* * *

**Special thanks go to Jack Inqu for suggesting that Harry Apparate to a Veela colony, even if I've twisted it out of shape beyond all recognition. We'll be coming back here at least a couple more times over the years. If anyone else wants to serve as an occasional sounding board for this story, let me know.**

**Most of Aimée's French was just me being silly; you can feed it into Google Translate if you want (I made sure it all comes out right this time!), but Lash repeated the important parts. And the reason I'm translating "**_**Transplanage**_**", the word used for Apparition/Apparation in French translations of **_**Harry Potter**_**, as "ghosting" is that "Apparition" literally means a ghost. That's why I prefer the non-canon spelling "Apparation" when I'm talking about teleportation, not to mention that it's more grammatically correct considering the verb is "to Apparate".**

**What else? Oh, Veela. I have a serious problem with J.K.'s description of the race, mostly because it's just not possible. If, as she's said in interviews, there are no full-blooded males, then how were there supposed to be any pure Veela beyond the first generation? And, as stated above, there's the issue with declaring Fleur to be a quarter-Veela because her grandmother was one. Without information on the rest of Fleur's family, all we can say with any certainty is that she's **_**at least**_** one-quarter Veela, which is not the same thing at all. Hence my own depiction of Veela here, which fits all the evidence in the books and, like me, is exceptionally weird.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	5. The World Below

"**The Blackstaff absorbs corruption":** I'm not going to argue about what Butcher did or didn't say in an interview as I have no clue one way or another, and I do my best not to debate issues I know nothing about. What I will say is that I did not find this claim anywhere in the main series, and I went hunting for it after people started mentioning it. (And most of you should already know my opinion about author interviews and canonicity, anyway.)

**Facepalm:** Yes, I do keep a list of what spells Harry uses and what they are analogues for. So far, I've shown _Bats'vel _(_Alohamora_), _Nvachel_ (_Legilimens_), _Darbas_ (Apparation, though canon has no incantation for it), and _Zhamanel_ (_Accio_). Two more show up later in this chapter, but what they do should be fairly obvious. If you're curious what the words themselves mean, just stick them in Google Translate; I'm using Armenian for all the spells Harry learns from Lash.

**Disclaimer:** Did Dresden ever explain how his shield bracelet, which he wore around his left wrist, was able to project a mystical shield when he noted again and again that the left side of the body _absorbed_ magic? If not, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 5  
****The World Below**

"How about that?"

"Nearly there. You are so very close. Try again."

Harry's face shone, and the smile Lash gave him in response stayed in place even after he shut his eyes again. "_T'ak'un_," the boy intoned after a few seconds of concentration. His magic rippled over his skin; when it stilled again, he looked out, and she peered at the window across from the park that Harry was barely able to see even after the Dursleys had taken him to the optometrist for a new prescription. Magnifying that portion of his vision, she twisted the picture to counteract the natural distortion of the glass and fiddled with it a bit to remove the glare and sharpen the reflection. The trees on either side of him were perfectly in focus, but of Harry himself there was no sign.

"Congratulations, Harry," she told him as he faded back into sight. "You have just cast your first veil, and in only a couple of hours, as well." Before he could cheer in delight, she warned, "Do not get too excited, however. As the primary purpose of a veil is to escape from a pursuer or to sneak somewhere undetected, you need to be able to throw one upon yourself in far less time than you take now. For all that they are difficult, a simple veil and a sturdy shield are two of the most important combat spells around."

"Combat spells. You mean you're going to teach me how to fight?" he asked with a pensive frown.

"No, I plan to teach you how to protect yourself," she corrected sternly, though she was quite thankful that he did not seem too eager to get himself into that mess. Hopefully he would not develop the same unhealthy excess of conscience that Dresden had suffered from. "If you are going to further a friendship with a race that has a long-standing grudge against the Black Court, I will not risk you becoming a helpless hostage." A quick look up at the sun made her frown. "Come along, now; it is already time for lunch."

Standing up, Harry brushed the grass off his trousers, and she turned her attention off of him and dismissed the magnified window from her field of view. She was not lying when she told him he was quick at picking up the basic veil, but she doubted that he would be nearly as skilled at them as Molly, Dresden's apprentice. Harry did not have the degree of control that girl possessed, not yet at least, and from the numerous lessons they had had, he was already showing a very slight bent toward kinetic spells. Today's showing was most likely merely a matter of him already knowing how it felt to be unnoticeable, even invisible in a manner of speaking, and so he needed far less time understanding out how the intent should be shaped.

The walk back to Number Four passed in comfortable silence. Poking his head into the kitchen, the garage, the laundry room, and even the little office no one used revealed them all to be empty, and Harry backtracked to the living room. "Hey, Dudley? Where's Aunt Petunia?"

"Went back to bed right after breakfast," the obese child answered, piggy eyes never turning from the commercial playing on the television.

"She's been doing that a lot lately," Harry muttered, and Dudley nodded in distracted agreement. At the same time, Lash grumbled silently. She did not need to deal with this right now. A pensive frown marred the boy wizard's face as he returned to the kitchen. "What do you think's wrong with her, Lash?"

_Does it really matter?_, she snarled to herself. Knowing that such a remark would not be appreciated, the former Fallen instead said, "Constant fatigue, flattened affect, disinterest in her previous activities? It sounds like depression to me. Perhaps she has always been this way, and you and Dudley are only now old enough to notice it?"

Harry chewed his lip in thought for a moment before shaking his head. Unfortunately, she knew there was another explanation: mental manipulations of any kind – be they deleted memories, compulsions, or outright thralldom – always produced side effects. The two whales of the house had yet to display any such abnormalities, but it was only a matter of time before the changes became apparent in them, as well. As for why Petunia was being affected so soon…

"I am not entirely sure what the cause is," she said carefully, "but there is a possibility that the commands you placed in her mind are conflicting with something else that was already present." That situation would increase the mental stress Petunia was under, which made it the most likely culprit. Thankfully, the solution to that problem would also tell her what the issue was if her guess turned out to be incorrect if the situation further devolved in the future.

"How do we fix it? Get rid of the commands?"

She shook her head. If this was a natural result of psychomancy, undoing it now would offer little benefit. Two months was more than enough time for the commands to have lodged themselves into the foundations of Petunia's mind, anyway, so trying to remove them would do more harm than good. "I cannot suggest what to do without first examining her."

Unfortunately, he mistook her deflection for a suggestion, and he turned back around and scurried through the living room to Vernon and Petunia's bedroom. As he passed the television, she watched from the corner of his eye for any hint of disturbance, whether that be it flickering out, inexplicably switching colors, or simply losing picture quality. With the amount of magic he had been playing with in their earlier lesson, his mere presence should have been enough to cause some sort of disruption. That was the whole reason Dresden had been forced to live without 'modern' amenities; anything produced later than 1950 or so, particularly appliances that relied on computer processors of some sort, was bound to fail sooner or later. Generally sooner.

Dudley's cartoon was unaffected.

There had to be a reason for this discrepancy, but for all her experience and knowledge, she was having a devil of a time figuring out what it was. Her best current theory – although even that was mostly guesswork – was that it had something to do with the way he could teleport long distances without opening a Way. Magic was 'otherworldly' in a sense, deeply connected to the Nevernever, and that was the reason it tended to break so many objects born from technology. Harry, however, had an unique affinity for magic; it was almost as if his power was totally mundane. Rather than having one foot in the Nevernever the way other wizards did, his mind somehow existed entirely in the mortal world, and…

Well, it was the _'and'_ that was the problem. She had never heard of something like this, had not even thought such an ability could be possible, nor did she have any way of predicting what benefits or difficulties that strange trait would cause him. Her confusion only grew with each day that went by without a reasonable answer presenting itself; already it was enough that she was toying with the idea of asking Harry to teleport to the White Council's headquarters and see if they could find some detail she had overlooked. Of course, that posed a number of problems all its own, not least of which was that they were untrustworthy and primarily interested in maintains their position as the leaders of wizards. She had never voiced this opinion to Dresden, but she personally thought the so-called Black Council was exactly the kind of shake-up the Wizards needed.

While she was distracted by her thoughts, Harry hesitantly pushed open the door to the master bedroom. "Aunt Petunia?" he whispered.

A head of messy blonde hair poked out of the mass of blankets on the bed and glared blearily at him. For a woman who Harry remembered as meticulous and almost obsessed with cleanliness, right now she appeared extraordinary disheveled. "Harry? What are you doing in here?"

"I was just worried about you," was his nervous response.

She sighed and threw the covers back over her. "I'm fine. Just go outside and play or something."

The unadulterated apathy in Petunia's voice made Lash frown. Now that she was paying attention, she agreed with the boys that something was off about this. Even if someone else had given the mortal woman conflicting commands, it should not have produced this effect. Psychomancy tended to escalate in the same direction as the original spell; Molly, for instance, had imparted fear to her ex-boyfriend, and that then developed into paranoia. If anything, Harry's spell should have turned Petunia smothering, not disinterested. There was something strange at work here.

"Harry, I need your body."

Harry turned his body over without a word of argument, and once she stuffed herself into the meat shell she waved a hand through the air, forcing Petunia into a deep sleep. Pulling the blankets back, she rested Harry's fingertips against the woman's temples and forced them into her mind.

Her eyes widened at the sight waiting for her. Petunia's mindscape when Harry first worked her over looked the same that mortals' always did to her: rivers of quicksilver forming a web-like structure. Now, however, those rivers had turned into rapids, shimmering globs of thought and memory spraying into the empty void and drifting for a time before falling back into her mind, though not necessarily in the same rivers they had come out of. Grabbing hold of Harry's hand, she pulled him deeper into the tangled web, her eyes flicking back and forth as she searched for the source of the disruption.

It did not take long to find it.

She brought them to a stop and stared in amazement at the place Harry had inserted his commands. The stream leading up to it was placid, normal, but afterward? Something was creating a tremendous degree of turbulence, and though it leveled out a little as it went on, every time it hit a juncture of other streams, it 'infected' them with the same confusion. This was not someone else sabotaging their work; something had gone dreadfully wrong with Harry's psychomancy.

"Can you fix it?" said boy asked desperately.

Lash honestly had no idea what was going on, let alone how to fix it, but she gave him a nod anyway and turned her attention back to the problem at hand. A closer look showed that the drops of compulsion Harry had inserted now looked red and swollen, almost as if they were inflamed, and tiny specks of red light were flaking off the drops and drifting down with the current.

No, she realized, the sparks were not coming from the compulsions at all. Faint whirlpools had formed around the reddened drops, and if was from these that the disturbance was coming from. Seeing no other recourse, she told Harry, "Keep close to me. There is no telling what could happen with her mind in this state, nor where you would end up."

His grip around her left hand tightened, and she shoved her hand into the river.

A few stray thoughts smacked her in the face, but then she was at the nearest of the whirlpools. A torrent of memory flooded her mind: a younger Petunia and a woman with almost blood red hair deep in an argument, Petunia wearing a white gown that could only be a wedding dress. The same redhead stirring a metal pot on the stove and dumping diced leaves into it. Petunia staring at a photo where the differences between her own plain appearance and the girl's greater beauty were more than obvious. Harry as a toddler glaring at a wooden block and the toy then shooting away to crash through a window. The girl that could only be Harry's mother, much younger now, and a black-haired boy with a hooked nose laughing at something before realizing that Petunia was watching them, and the boy storming over and slamming the door shut. Not only was the content of the memories related, the same emotions flavored all of them, though admittedly in varying amounts.

Fear. Anger. Envy.

"She is jealous of your magic. Yours and your mother's," Lash whispered, conclusions forming and linking together with lightning speed. "She wanted it for herself, and when she could not have it, she grew angry at those who have it instead. She also is frightened of it, of what it can do. Over the years, this has festered into a deep hatred of all things magical. That is what is causing her behavior to change. The commands you gave her to be kind to you and care for you are in direct conflict with her natural desire, which is to hurt and belittle you so she can prove to herself that you are not better than her. That conflict has worn down her psychic reserves, and now she is just limping along."

"That… But that doesn't make any sense! Why does being mean to me make her feel better?!" he demanded with all the innocence and naïveté of youth.

"Do not look to me for an explanation of why mortals do the things they do. I have always thought your kind at least a little mad."

He frowned and looked up at the thread of thought again. "If my commands are causing this, we need to take them out. We need to fix her."

That was really not an option here. "Let us say for the sake of argument that we do that. She would immediately change back from the borderline pleasant woman she has been for the last couple of months to the cruel, spiteful creature she has been for all the rest of your life. Do you really want to do that, to be once more neglected and abused?"

"What other choice do we have?!"

"It is not the compulsions themselves that are the issue," she replied, ignoring Harry's frustration. "It is instead the _conflict_ between them and her emotions. In that case, I can twist her emotions so that conflict disappears." Lash crossed her arms and leaned back the slightest amount, just enough to give off an air of nonchalance. "As you are the one who will be effected by what I do, I will leave this choice to you."

Harry stared at her in astonishment, and then he glanced away uncertainly. She knew what she would prefer him do, but this was actually a good opportunity to determine how much her presence had influenced him. Would he take the smart route and allow her to further alter Petunia's mind, or would the crippling self-worth issues the Dursleys inflicted upon him before her arrival have the same tight grip they did before?

After several moments, her host looked at her again. "If you play around with her memories, she'll get better and will still be nice to me?"

"She will."

"Okay," the boy breathed, his voice still unsure. "Do it."

She inclined her head in acquiescence and shoved her hand back into the frothing stream. Harry's mother floating down to the ground after jumping out of the swing; the tender seeds of jealousy were buried, leaving only behind the faint wonder. Plates shattering while the teenaged redhead screamed at her father; the fear was leached away. Harry and Dudley as very young children, just barely out of toddlerhood, playing together; both fear and envy in this memory, and both bottled up when she was done.

Time was indeterminate in the mind, but even so Lash knew several minutes at least must have past when she finished editing the last memory. While she had the opportunity, she checked and discovered that no, she could no more alter the true substance of Petunia's memories than she could Harry's. Even the emotions associated with them could not be destroyed, merely separated and shoved into the aether. This was, unfortunately, therefore only a stopgap measure rather than a true solution, but it should buy enough time for the Fallen to decide on the best way to reinforce Harry's control without letting it slip to him all the consequences of this particular bit of psychomancy.

He was not yet ready for that knowledge, not when he was still deciding just what he thought about magic.

"That should do it," she announced, pulling her hand out of Petunia's thoughts. As she was the one still in control of Harry's body, she retreated from the woman's mind, going slower this time so she would not be thrown out as violently as she had when she had reprogrammed Vernon. Petunia had remained in that enchanted sleep throughout the procedure, and Lash dissipated her spell before asking in Harry's voice, "How are you feeling, Aunt Petunia?"

"Hmm… muh… Harry?" The blonde woman pulled herself to a seated position and rubbed her eyes. "Did I oversleep again?"

Lash could feel Harry's subconsciously start fighting her for control, and she ceded his body back to him. "You've been doing that a lot lately. Are you okay?"

"It's nothing to worry about," she answered with a faint smile. "I just haven't been feeling my best. Probably just the flu going around or something. Oh!" she declared with a look at the clock, "It's already time for lunch. Get Dudley, will you, and I'll fix you two something to eat."

With a nod, Harry backed out of the room and shut the door behind him. "She seems better now," he admitted.

"Of course. Did you doubt me?"

The boy did not respond to her teasing question this time, his eyes clouded as though wrestling with a thorny problem. His fingers meanwhile spun the wooden ring that sat on his left thumb around and around; playing with his teleportation focus had become something of a nervous habit since he completed it a week prior. "But is she really better? Is whatever was wrong with her gone, or will it come back?"

Lash sighed and pulled him into her side. "That is something that only time will reveal."

* * *

Over the next few days, even though Aunt Petunia had since gone back to normal, Harry still kept a nervous eye on her. He wanted to think it was just because he was worried about her, but he was also concerned that he would have to ask Lash to go in and work on her some more. It had not been so bad when he first entered the Dursleys' minds, but after this latest tweak, he was worried that this might need to be repeated every few months, like taking the car to a mechanic for routine maintenance. His guardian angel did not seem to have a problem with that, but she had seen countless centuries of humans come and go. He, on the other hand, was only nine, but already he could begin to imagine what it would be like to walk through life seeing everyone around him as nothing more than puppets that needed a bit of glue here or a screw tightened there.

And that possibility scared him more than he could bring himself to admit.

Searching for something to take his mind off the concerns that now plagued him, his eyes landed on his English textbook sitting innocently in his book bag. In class that day, they had been reading an excerpt from a fantasy novel, and he remembered the question he had wanted to ask but dared not speak aloud where everyone could hear him. "Hey, Lash? Are elves and dwarves real?"

That caught the lounging angel off-guard, and she rolled over to look at him with a curious expression. "What?"

"Elves and dwarves," he repeated slowly. "Are they real?"

"Not as I expect you are picturing," was her slow response as she shifted to sit on his bed instead of lie on it. "Though the fae do share some similarities to the fantastical description of elves; they are beautiful and capricious, and the Summer Court does indeed have a strong connection to forests. Likewise, the only dwarves I can think of are the Svartalves, which ironically translates to _'dark elves'_. The Svartalves are masters of forging and jewelcraft, but it is the beauty of flesh that they prize above all else."

Harry had a suspicion he knew vaguely what she meant by that, but he really did not want to know if he was right. Before Lash could threaten him with more teasing, he pressed on, "Could we visit them? The Svartalves, I mean."

"That probably would not be a good idea. They can be rather territorial, and intruders rarely walk away unharmed, if at all." His face fell, but then she continued, "However, you are young yet. Long-lived races generally have few children and therefore value the ones they do produce, and Svartalves are extremely long-lived. Even if they took offense at you barging your way into their domain, it is certainly possible that they would let you leave relatively unmolested." After a moment, she shrugged. "It is up to you. If you wish to give it a chance, I will not stop you."

"And you're okay with this? Even though you say it's dangerous?" That was a strange opinion to hear from an angel, but considering she had been quick to leap to his defense ever since he first met her, she likely had a reason for her change in attitude.

She did not disappoint. "Nothing worth having is without risk; the key is to minimize those risks when you can and, when you cannot, to decide if the goal is worth the consequences. In this case, there is a good chance that the consequences will be minor, so the only question now is this: Is meeting the Svartalves worth it?"

He thought about it for a moment and nodded. Lash said nothing in reply, merely waved her hand for him to continue, and he stood and felt his wooden 'ghosting' ring respond to his eagerness. "What do they look like?"

"They have a strange appear— Actually, no, I will not tell you," she said suddenly. "You were able to make it to the Veela colony without knowing what they looked like, and I am curious whether you can duplicate that feat."

_So it's all going to be on me, huh?_ Harry twisted the ring and thought for a moment. The dwarves in the story were depicted as short and stocky, with wild hair and long beards. They also carried axes and wore lots of metal armor. He squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to remember anything else about them, but to no avail. _Well, here goes nothing_.

"_Darbas_."

He had used this ability only a few times since returning from Toulon, mostly because the sensation of being crushed until he was no wider than a pencil and suffocating in the deep darkness was still highly disconcerting, and this time was no exception. After a couple of seconds, however, he stumbled forward and caught himself on something hard and warm. What that was, he had no clue; he could not see a thing. "Lash?" he called out in a warbling voice. "Why can't I see? What's wrong with me?!"

A sigh ghosted across his ear. "Have you tried making a light, child? Perhaps there is nothing wrong with you and it is simply too dark?"

Oh. Well, if she wanted to be that way about it…

Too embarrassed to admit that the thought had not gone through his mind before he panicked, he pointed his right hand to his side and visualized what he wanted. "_Arev_." From his palm shot a ball of white light, sparks falling from it like a bottle rocket or a comet, and it bounced around the rock walls of the tunnel he was standing in. When the spell finally died, he turned around and fired another in the opposite direction, which only showed him an identical picture.

He shrugged; since both paths were the same, did it really matter which he went down? For the third time, he spoke the incantation, but this time he forced the eldritch power out his left hand. Lash had been very clear that he needed to be careful with which hand he used for a spell: his dominant hand was for projecting magic away from him while his off hand manipulated and absorbed energy close to his body, within a foot or so. A sparkling, swirling nimbus of white burst into being in his palm, and he held it aloft to give him a better look at his footing as he walked down the right-hand path.

Though considering the floor was smooth as glass, he really did not need to watch for obstacles so much as to make sure he kept going straight and did not smash his face into the wall.

Minutes passed in silence, the walls of the tunnel eventually giving way to yet more tunnel, and Harry's patience began to wear thin. "I thought I was heading to where the Svartalves were."

"You were."

"Then where are they?"

"Now that," Lash said in a voice full of false cheer, "I have no idea about. I do not know this place."

He stopped. "You don't know where we are?"

She shook her head, and he grumbled something incomprehensible. If they were completely lost, what was the point of sticking around? He may as well go back to Privet Drive and find something else to do. With school back in session, he had not been able to learn as many spells as he had during those first two weeks, only one or maybe a little more in the weeks Lash's lessons involved magic, and the constant interruptions also meant he was not as proficient with them as he could be. Maybe a little additional practice wouldn't go amiss—

"Harry, do you see that?" Lash whispered, pointing at something in the distance.

Only through squinting his eyes nearly closed could he make out what she was talking about, and even then just barely. A few specks of orange light bounced around in the distant darkness, maybe five or six in all. "Do you think they're friendly?" he asked.

The angel quirked an eyebrow at him but said nothing. Either she thought his question quite stupid, or she wanted him to think through it on his own. She had started doing that the previous week, and it did fit with her making him choose whether or not to come here. He amended his question. "If they aren't friendly, will you help me get away?"

"Of course."

_Here goes nothing_. Taking a few steps toward the center of the tunnel, he waved the hand holding his light at the oncoming strangers. "Hey!" he shouted. "Over here!"

The lights stopped for a second, and then they surged toward him faster than he expected. Less than a minute passed before he heard the clomping of boot heels striking stone; shortly after, the group came into view. The dwarves' faces were round, and they were short, but that was where their similarities to his imaginings ended. Bulbous eyes protruding from pale faces stared at him, and their lean bodies looked far more vicious than the illustration in his textbook. "Hi, I'm Harry," he told them nervously, taking care not to speak his full name. Lash had told him about the dangers of giving out his Name, specifically that someone could use it to tie curses to him or track him wherever he went. "I don't mean to bother you, but—"

The rest of his apology went unvoiced due to the glass spearhead that was leveled at the hollow of his throat. That distraction made the cloud of light in his hand vanish, leaving them in the semi-darkness the dwarves' torches – capped with glowing crystals rather than flames – could not penetrate. The lead dwarf jabbered some incomprehensible gibberish at him, and when Harry did not respond fast enough, the dwarf turned to his companions and spat something at them.

Words were then unnecessary when a second dwarf pulled a length of thick rope out of a back pouch.

"Go along with it for now," Lash counseled as his wrists were tied together and his upper arms then bound to his torso. Harry stared at her in disbelief. "Even with your mobility, they still have you at a disadvantage. Provided they do not make any overtly aggressive moves, your best chance to escape would be not to kick up a fuss."

He gulped. "And if they do try to hurt me?"

The smile she gave him was dark and cruel, two adjectives he never would have associated with a guardian angel before meeting one. "I did say I would keep you safe, did I not? You will leave this place without major injury."

The butt of a spear smacked him in small of his back, and then the leader of this little group took the end of the rope and started pulling him in the direction he had come from. The dwarves spoke to each other in that same grinding tongue they had used with him. "What are they saying?" he whispered to Lash.

"Do you remember how I said there are very few languages I do not know?" He nodded, and she gave him a sheepish shrug. "Apparently this is one of them."

He gaped at her in astonishment and demanded, "How was I supposed to talk to the Svartalves if you don't know their language?"

"You misunderstand. I _do_ know Svartalfska; this, however, is not it. I have no idea what they are speaking," she quietly admitted. His rising unease only grew with her next sentences. "Furthermore… These are not Svartalves. I know nothing about this race."

By the time they finally reached their destination, Harry was just two or three steps away from a panic attack. A pair of tall stone doors swung open with barely a whisper, and then his fear was replaced by wonder. There was an entire city down here!

One of the dwarves at his back prodded him to continue, and he took a few shambling steps along the catwalk, doing his best not to stray too close to the edges. There were no handrails to catch himself against, and a quick peek showed that it was a very long way down. All around him, more dwarves walked around, going about their daily business under the light of yet more gleaming gemstones; the city looked as busy as London did the one time the Dursleys took him there because no one was willing to watch him for the afternoon. Above the populace and about level with the entrance, guards with short swords belted around their waists and rolling metal balls in their hands stood in pairs on ledges carved out of the walls of the cavern and watched over the bustling crowd. One guard took a drink from a waterskin, and when the female dwarf – the breasts were an obvious giveaway – pulled it away, flecks of something shiny stuck to her lips.

"Lash, did you see—?"

"I did. Look down and to your left. The one carrying the enormous basket of ore on his back? He just ate a chunk of metal."

The narrow bridge they walked over led to a gigantic sphere of solid rock that was suspended in the air solely by other roads like this one, and the dwarves ushered him into the opening chiseled into it. Torches were scattered around inside, just enough to see where they were going but not enough to alleviate the gloom. As they passed through, the dwarves in the other tunnels stopped to stare at them, or more accurately at him. They soon left the sphere and continued their trek, but already news of his presence was outrunning them. The crowds lined up on the sides of the smooth roads, waiting for him to pass, and the deeper into the city they went, the more Harry felt like a zoo animal being put on display.

At last they came to their destination. The building was only the faintest bit larger than the rest in the city, but what set it apart were the dozens of shining diamonds, each as big as his fist, socketed in the doorway; flanking it were glass sculptures of puzzling geometric designs, all thick lines and sharp angles. The oval door opened, and a trio dwarves stepped out into the silence that suddenly washed over the crowd. All three wore light blue robes of the same cut and braids in their thick white hair more complex than any other dwarf he had seen; the only difference in garb among them was the squarish skullcap on the head of the one in the middle. Harry's captor spouted off something, and the center dwarf gave Harry a long look up and down before speaking in a tone so pompous that it transcended language barriers.

The dwarf on the right stepped forward. "Punjabab?" he asked, staring intently at the boy's face. "Tekeli-li? English?"

"Yes!" Harry cried out in relief. "Yes, I speak English."

"Very well," the dwarf said. "This one is Carek, speaker for his Highness, king of the city of Warmehn. His Highness demands the human explain why he invaded the World Below."

"Invade?" he repeated in incredulity. "I didn't invade anywhere!"

Carek translated his words to the king and then turned back to him with the king's response. "Ridiculous. The Gates between the World Below and the World Above have been barred for the reign of four and twelve kings, and still they stand strong. The only way the human could get here was if he found another way to our territory and snuck in."

"Well, I did come in a different way," Harry slowly admitted, "but I didn't know I wasn't allowed to come here. I just wanted to know if you were real, like in the stories."

The king looked none too pleased at that announcement, though the crowd gasped at it, and Carek's own voice was hard as he translated the other dwarf's words. "Clearly these dwarves are real, and the human has committed a real crime in coming here. His Highness pronounces that that the punishment shall be—"

The dwarf on the left, older than the others if the deep wrinkles were any indication, then spoke in a soft voice to the king, cutting off Carek. After several tense seconds, the king grumbled something in return. "Boy," the elderly dwarf said in thickly accented English, "this human is magic, yes?"

"Yes?" he answered tentatively.

"And he used those magics to enter the World Below without knowing the importance of his actions?"

At his nod, the dwarf turned back to the king. The three then muttered to themselves for a time, during which Harry's heart just kept beating faster and faster, but finally the king and Carek walked back into what must have been the palace, neither looking exactly happy about it. The remaining royal dwarf barked a command at the guards, who quickly untied him. "I offer apologies for this," the old dwarf said, stepping closer and losing the officious tone he had previously used. "It has been much time since a human walked the World Below. We were not sure how to respond to your arrival."

"It's okay, I guess," Harry mumbled, rubbing his wrists to force feeling back into them. "What's going to happen to me now? Am I still going to be punished for all this?"

"It depends on how you call punishment," was the dwarf's cryptic reply. "I convinced his Highness and Carek that your appearance, despite not knowing where you are, was a sign from the Deep Sounds that you were meant to find us, even if you are a human. You are therefore recognized as Traveler, and while that spares your life, it does not permit you to walk among us. Come."

Harry glanced at Lash, hoping for an explanation, but she looked as confused as he felt. For all that dwarves had short legs, Harry needed to hustle to keep up, but he still had the breath to demand, "What do you mean, Traveler? Why can't I be here? And who are you, anyway?"

"You can call me Advisor; I gave up my name when I accepted my position. And none but a dwarf is allowed in the World Below; any other who sneaks into our realm is treated as an invader, as you saw, and it is a royal decree that all invaders are to be put to death. You do not look like a spy come to watch us or steal our belongings," said the dwarf with a short glance at him, "and it would not be right for you to pay a high price for what I think was a simple accident."

"Well, thanks for that."

The elderly dwarf nodded. "All dwarves are born into a… placement? No, a caste. Porter, Scribe, Crafter, Miner, Kingship. The exception is Traveler." Advisor yelled at a gaggle of dwarf children that rushed in front of them in pursuit of what looked like a purple, big-headed hybrid of a dog and a slug. "Travelers are criminals; though they have not committed a crime so bad they deserve execution, they are still too disruptive and dangerous to be consigned to a period of forced servitude. Accidental killing, repeated thievery, assault of a royal or a palace guard; these kinds of things all will cause a dwarf to sentenced as Traveler, and their punishment is simple. They are barred from reentering our cities, nor may they create new homes for themselves in the World Below. Except for brief trips here for trade purposes, they are banished to the World Above."

"Trade?" Lash asked. "If they are exiles, what is the purpose of coming back to trade?"

Harry dutifully repeated the question, and Advisor explained, "There is a price on each Traveler's head that is based on the severity of his crimes. A Traveler who brings something of value back to our gates – useful metals like pewter or tin or zinc, jewels the Feeder caste can use to transmute food, or even food itself – may put the value of his offering against his crime, and if a Traveler pays off his debt, he can ask the king to forgive him and maybe return to his old life. Of course, any transfers or purchases he makes will add to his debt, and it is often this that is the biggest hurdle for Travelers wishing to come back home."

"So if I pay whatever my own price is, I can come and go as I please?" Harry asked thoughtfully. That might not be too bad, actually, though considering the welcome he had received today, whether or not he would want to return was debatable.

Advisor nodded, but Lash had her own thoughts on the subject. "This could actually work out in your favor," she said as she slipped through goggling bystanders like a ghost. "As I told you, foci are often constructed of metal, but it is silver more than any other that is used simply because it holds magic so well. You would have a hard time buying it from human sources, but if you could trade with the dwarves for it, we can move on to making you some sturdy foci."

"Silver?" he asked weakly. He did not know what the price of silver was, but if it was anything like gold, he knew it was incredibly expensive. Turning to their guide, he prompted, "How much bigger will my debt grow if I bought silver from you guys?"

Advisor mouthed the word a few times as though he had no clue what Harry was talking about, but finally comprehension crossed his face. "Ah, _khrindinum_. Silver, yes, I know the metal you mean. Yes, you could find someone who would sell you some, but why would you want it? It is too soft for smithing, and it has no power when eaten."

"It's a human thing," he said hastily, hoping Advisor would not ask further. He really did not want to have to play relay between the dwarf and Lash. "How much does it cost?"

"I do not know; I have to ask a Crafter. I know it is a byproduct of copper mining, so we have much of it, in the trash heaps if nowhere else." Advisor shrugged. "But you have put no money against your own debt, so the price right now matters little."

"This might not have been a wasted trip, after all." Grinning, Lash clapped one hand on his shoulder. "First the Veela, now dwarves. Maybe you should have a few more adventures like this in the future."

* * *

**Oh, poor Lash. She has no idea that Harry will **_**always**_** figure out when people are keeping him in the dark "for his own safety", and it's always at the worst possible time.**

**The World Below was kind of fun to write about, especially for something that is really a convenient plot device more than anything else. And does anyone recognize where I got the dwarves' magics from? I'll give you a hint: they are found in two different series by the same author.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	6. Diagon Alley

**As many people noticed, the dwarves' magic is based on Allomancy and Soulcasting, magic systems from Brandon Sanderson's **_**Mistborn Trilogy**_** and **_**Stormlight Archives**_**, respectively. If you've never read either of them, I personally recommend **_**Mistborn**_** more, if only because Vin is the kind of badass heroine I love to read about.**

**The Defenstrated Typewriter:** Yes, I am stretching the capabilities of Apparation as depicted in canon, but in my defense it is shown as a wandless skill requiring only willpower and an (arguably unnecessary) spinning motion. Harry, on the other hand, has a focus and an incantation, which drastically improves his burgeoning ability. The dwarves know about wizards, but their particular magics do not allow them to erect wards.

**Next chapter may or may not be delayed. I take my second board exam in a week, so I don't know yet if that weekend will be spent writing or cramming.**

**Disclaimer:** Was Knockturn Alley so obviously evil that they openly sold poisoned candles and human fingers, some of them in physical stores that would not be able to hide all their stock quickly, yet the DMLE somehow never went down that road to even take a look? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 6  
****Diagon Alley**

"By now you should be able to feel your magic beginning to pool in your chest, as though it is resisting your call—"

"No, I don't."

"What?" Lash stared down at him, and Harry felt his cheeks grow hot. "What do you mean, you don't?"

"I don't feel anything." Well, except for some fatigue in his arm from stirring the pot over and over again, but that was it. There were certainly no magicky feelings building up in his chest, or anywhere else, for that matter.

She stared at him slack-jawed, and then her teeth clacked loudly together. Walking closer, she peered over his shoulder at the mess in the pot. "You said the incantation?" she asked, quite unnecessarily in his opinion since she had been standing right there the entire time.

"Yep."

"You added all the ingredients? You used corn syrup for the base? A photograph to represent your mind? Glitter for sight? Velcro for sound?—"

"—Lemon juice for taste, bleach for smell, sandpaper for touch, a scrap of orange cloth for the body," he snarled in frustration. "Yes, yes, yes, I did all that! You were right here watching me!"

"And yet it isn't working," she shot back. "All this potion does is make you glow; it is the simplest potion any wizard can brew. And if you used the wrong ingredients, you still would have felt your magic responding." Lash's eyes burned phosphorescent green, and the room seemed to darken as she grew to fill the kitchen. "There is no possible way you could have screwed this up!"

Her fist slammed into the refrigerator; while there was no damage dealt to the appliance, the impact still rolled like thunder in the small space, and Harry flinched back with an unconscious whimper.

At the sound, the kitchen instantly returned to normal. Lash rubbed her temples tiredly, her eyes squeezed shut. "All right, fine. We can work with this. Somehow." Opening her eyes, which thankfully had returned to normal now, she waved him closer. "I'm sorry, Harry. I am at a loss for what to do, but that is no reason for me to take my irritation with the situation out on you. Please forgive me?"

After four months together, Harry liked to think that he had gotten used to Lash trying to talk him into doing whatever she wanted; for all that she was an angel, she had no qualms against manipulating him, even if it had never been to his detriment. This burst of anger, however, was a little too… _Dursley-ish_ for his liking, though that word was rapidly losing meaning with his relatives' new attitudes toward him. Rather than answer her, he prodded, "What is it that has you so upset? You've been like this for a while."

"Yes, I have been." She fell backward into a wooden chair that appeared just in time to catch her. Her blue-green eyes were clouded and her smile brittle when she looked up at him. "Your magic is strange, at odds with how it should be. It does not interfere with technology, which you will be thankful for in the future, but in return you have absolutely no access to the Nevernever. You cannot open a Way, you cannot summon even the weakest and most benign of spirits, and apparently you are entirely incapable of brewing even a basic potion. You are, for all intents and purposes, fully lodged in the human world. Were it not for your ability with Evocation, I would suspect that you were not a wizard at all, yet you clearly are." Bitter complaints voiced, she huffed and dropped her head into her hands.

_My magic is strange?_, he thought with a gulp. She had not mentioned this to him, but it would explain why her temper had gradually grown shorter. In fact, it was right after his botched attempt at summoning the month prior that she had really gotten tetchy. Clearing his throat, he asked, "Do you know why my magic is acting odd?"

Lash barked out a single laugh and lifted her head. Harry, though, was distracted from her strained expression by the blonde hair that, though normally lay perfectly flat against her skull, now stuck up and out where her fingers had agitated it. Her stylish new hairdo fell when she shook her head, and she reluctantly answered him. "I don't have the faintest idea."

That was one way to suck the humor out of the room.

"But, but you're an angel!" he exclaimed, pointing at her as though it should be self-evident. "How could you not know what's going on?!"

"Do you think I am not just as disturbed by this lack of information as you are, if not more so?" She huffed again. "I have never heard of any wizard like you, and your kind has been my primary interest for the last two millennia. Your magic should not be able to hide even one secret from me, let alone the plethora it taunts me with!"

"What about the, er…" What was that organization's name, again? "Oh, the White Council. Do you think they'd know what's going on?"

"The White Council?" Lash threw back her head and laughed mockingly. "Doubtful. Arrogance runs rampant at the expense of wisdom there, and their collective ego is overshadowed only by their paranoia. They will not know what to make of you, and so they will fear you as a matter of course. You think Petunia's behavior was bad? It will be as nothing compared to theirs."

He blinked at the sheer vehemence in her voice. "But you suggested Lisette and the other Veela go to them for help. Why would you do that if you dislike them so much?"

"They are the largest organization of wizards in the world, and that gives them a substantial degree of power. Power they would be more than happy to turn against the Black Court. But just because they are useful does not mean they are trustworthy." She shook her head and brushed her hair out from in front of her face. "That, at least, Dresden and I were in full agreement on."

The bright spot of hope and confidence he saw was rather rapidly dimming. "Are they all that bad?" he asked in a soft voice.

"They…" Lash trailed off, and for a moment she was lost in thought. Finally, she sighed. "No, they are not all quite that bad. Some, assuming they like you, you can depend on to do as they have promised. The issue is that those particular individuals are greatly outnumbered by those I would not count on were they the only allies available to me.

"But if you are willing to take this chance," she continued sadly, "I will not stop you. When you have to run for your life, however, I will be there to say _'I told you so'_. Oh, and do not mention what you have done to the Dursleys. They have an irrational hatred of mind magics of all stripes."

_That's good information to have ahead of time_, he thought with a slow shudder, imagining the horrors that might have befallen him had he commented on that by accident. "Where can I find them?"

"Their headquarters are in Scotland, in the tunnels underneath Edinburgh Castle." Lash sighed and flapped her hand dismissively. "There is no way to know if any members of the Senior Council, their leaders, will be there, but a boy appearing out of thin air in the middle of their compound will certainly be enough to earn their attention."

Taking a deep breath, Harry tried to imagine what it would be like being surrounded by other, older wizards, people who could possibly figure out what was going on with him and – as much as it felt like a betrayal – would be able to teach him stuff that Lash just couldn't. For instance, she had no firsthand knowledge about what it was like growing up as a wizard, though he knew she would do her best to work with him on that like she had everything else. Not to mention, it would be nice to be around other magical humans, as dear as his guardian angel was to him.

Unable to picture his destination, he could do nothing but trust in his magic to see him safely where he wanted to go, just as it had when he traveled to Toulon and the dwarves' tunnels. "_Darbas_."

The crushing sensation of ghosting never ceased to unnerve him, and he reached for the brick wall to his left to support himself upon his arrival. Before he could regain his balance, however, the air was split by a loud _crack_, and he found himself jumping in shock and subsequently falling to the ground. A man dressed in a navy bathrobe with long blond hair sneered and stepped over him. "Watch where you're going, brat!"

"Well, that was totally uncalled for," Harry grumbled as he climbed to his feet. Dusting his trouser legs off, he looked up, and then his jaw dropped.

He must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. This definitely was not a castle.

Harry stood at one end of an alleyway, shops stretching ahead of him as far as he could see. And not just any shops, either; the one to his right had a handwritten sign in the window that read _'Bewitching Brews and Blood-Replenishing Potions, 50% off today only!'_, and to his left he found a crowd of kids staring in obvious longing at a broomstick of all things! He could not spot the details of any other stores for all the people stuffed in the small space, people dressed in robes of much the same design as those the rude man had worn. "All those times you made me teleport to different places so I'd get more comfortable with it, and you never suggested coming here?" he groused, but only silence answered him. "Lash?" When he still received no response, he frowned and looked to his side. "Lash!"

Instantly he knew there was something horribly wrong with his guardian angel. Lash sat in the same chair she had created at Privet Drive, her head in her hands and the expression on her face one of resignation. When he turned his body to face her, however, she moved with him, staying at the same distance and the same angle relative to him, even if that meant slipping through barrels and crates as though she were a ghost. He knew objectively that her body was just an illusion – she had told him so herself just a couple of days after their introduction – but _never_ had she made it this obvious.

Before he could freak out any more, her body _twisted_, squares of color growing and shrinking until where once sat a woman there was now only a mass of jumbled boxes. The distortion vanished with a whistling crackle like static, and then she reappeared standing right in front of him. She was also, to his great relief, completely back to normal.

"This is not what I expected," she whispered, eyes twitching as she stared down the alleyway. "Harry, what am I to do with you?"

"You can't put this on me!" he protested. "Maybe if you had given me better directions, I would have gone to the White Council's headquarters instead of their marketplace."

"Harry?" Lash looked over at him and gave him a weak, brittle smile. "The White Council does not have a marketplace. There are no magical shopping centers anywhere in the world; wizards are too spread out for it to be feasible. Any store that sells magical wares disguises its true purpose."

Blinking in surprise, he raised his arm to point at the alley in silent question.

"I know. I say there is nothing like this, and yet my words are contradicted by what is right in front of us."

"Wait, do you mean you don't know where we are?!" he demanded. First the World Below and now here; for all her other skills, Lash was a terrible navigator. Several people in the crowd glanced over at his screech, so he ducked his head and repeated in a softer tone, "You don't know where we are?"

"No, I do not."

The lost, almost helpless tone of her reply put him on edge. "Are we in danger? Should we head back home?" And he had been slacking off on creating the shield focus Lash kept pestering him about. It was true that he had only purchased enough silver and copper from the dwarves to make it a couple of weeks ago, but he knew from making his ring that writing the runes was a tedious task, and carving the strange Nephilim letters into metal rather than soft wood would take longer than the afternoon his ring had required. Bad as that was, attuning it was even worse, and he did not have the patience to go through that again any time soon. Maybe his laziness had been a mistake.

Lash grit her teeth in a tight smile. "Again, I do not know."

"But what's going to—"

"I don't know!" she shouted, and Harry stared at her; not because of the volume, but at the hysteria that colored her words. The woman ran her hands through her hair for just a moment only to pull them away and stare at them like she had never seen them before. Once again she flickered, though this time there was no distortion; she just reappeared with her arms hanging loosely at her sides. Her voice as she spoke was flat and robotic, with only the tiniest edge to hint at her distress. "I wonder what you are seeing, but without more information I have no way of drawing any conclusions. I simply do not have the requisite data."

He needed a moment to parse through the statement; never had Lash talked like that before. "I guess we should look around, then?" Catching her swift nod just before she vanished from his sight, he took a breath and merged with the crowd.

He turned his head in every direction in the vain hope of catching everything going on around him, but after a few minutes, he had to admit to himself that he was not nearly so nervous now as he was upon his arrival. Most of that had something to do with how bizarre yet familiar everything was, discussions that he would expect to hear at any store painted over with the unbelievable. To one side, a pet store that advertised such alien creatures as puffskeins and crups, and next to it another named Eeylops that was apparently dedicated expressly to owls. On the other side, a man in a smart robe that looked remarkably like a business suit was arguing with a store owner about the price of dragon liver.

He passed by a store that proclaimed itself to have robes for all occasions, and a young boy dashed out of the building with his hands clasped tightly around something. Before anyone could move out of the way, a burly man with his robe half undone stomped out and flicked a thin baton, magic hauling the boy into the air where the adult wizard could harangue him for stealing his moneybag. Harry skittered to the other side of the street, having no interest in witnessing such a thing after dealing with such accusations, though false, at the Dursleys' and their neighbors' hands, and he nearly gagged at the horrid stench emanating from several leaking barrels sitting a short distance from an apothecary's doorway. With his hand covering his mouth and nose, he moved away, and a clumsy elbow smacked him in the head.

That seemed to be the signal everyone was waiting for, and suddenly he was being pushed and shoved in every direction. Any time he moved out of the way of one careless shopper, another ran into him, and it took several painful moments before he could squeeze himself out of the crowd onto a nearby curb. "They really need to watch where they're going," he huffed in no little irritation. Sure, he was small for his age, but that was no reason for them to just walk all over him like that! "Lash, you there?"

"I am," the angel breathed into his ear. "This will— I have much to think about. Do you expect you will need me in the immediate future?"

Lash had never said anything like this to him before, and that scared him. "You aren't going to leave, are you?"

"No, no, of course I will not," she hastily assured him. "I gave you my word that I would be with you for as long as you want me around, did I not?" He nodded slowly. "Right now I merely desire some quiet in which to reconsider my previous assumptions. If you have need of me, I will be just inside your mindscape and will return at your call."

"Oh. Okay, then. See you later." A faint pressure in his head, something he had not noticed before but could not remember feeling before Lash revealed herself to him, faded away to nothing. "So," he thought out loud, "where should I go now?"

He really was in no mood to brave the bustling mass of shoppers again, that much was for sure. Hopping atop a nearby crate – then nearly falling off when it emitted a squawk like a chicken and shot out a small gout of flame – and jumping up to grab the edge of the low-hanging roof, he peered over their heads. His walk had led him to what looked like the opposite end of the alley from where he'd arrived; a tall building stood nearby in the middle of the street, built entirely out of what looked like white marble and with a sculpture of a dragon rearing up on the roof, and to either side this main road split into two. On one of them, there was still a large number of people flowing in and out, but the other, the one on his side of the street? It was much quieter, and in fact it seemed that everyone was giving it a wide berth.

What was so special about that road?

Mind made up and fingers loosing their grip, he dropped back down to the ground and dodged the second fireball. No one payed any attention to him as he slunk along the edges of the activity, nor did he meet any more knees and elbows, and he quickly arrived at the darkened side street. The walls were gloomy and dirty, more like someone had splashed buckets of mud on them once upon a time than just a general lack of cleaning, and the contrast it made with the much brighter road he had just left was extraordinary. This much filth had to be intentional, and that only roused his curiosity further.

Heading deeper down the road, he quickly came upon the inhabitants, all of whom seemed to be playing up the dismal atmosphere as hard as they could. A trio of men in black cloaks huddled in an alcove, whispering as they passed unknown things back and forth amongst them, and in a nearby window Harry spotted a pair of women dressed in loosely laced corsets and short skirts winding slowly around one another; maybe their store sold dancing clothes? Even more than in the first street, no one looked at each other as they passed, instead focused intently on their feet or their window shopping.

"Aren't you a pretty little thing?" Harry nearly jumped out of his skin at the crooning voice coming from the side, and he blanched when his eyes found the speaker. The woman, though he was being generous with that label, crept closer to him, her spindly fingers reaching out for him and the sharp smile she gave him doing nothing to detract from the hideousness of her rotting face. "Not lost, are you, dearie?"

He swallowed the first stuttering denial that came to his mouth and stood straighter, shoulders rolling back and pushing his chest out. Lash had not just taught him magic in the months she had cared for him; she also made sure he knew how to think and argue logically, how to keep his balance on a thin wooden beam or a rope strung between two trees, and how to look confident when all he wanted to do was run away screaming. He said, "I know where I'm going, thank you," and he was proud of how even his voice sounded to his ears.

"Such a polite little thing, too," the ugly creature purred, and a shiver ran up and down his spine. "So… _sweet_. I think I'll keep you with me." Before he could deny her again, she lunged, grabbing the shoulder of his shirt with one hand while the other buried itself in his hair.

Harry shoved his hands into her chest and let his fear surge forth. "_Herranal_!"

The creature screamed as she shot away from him as though blasted out of a cannon, her limbs flailing until she crashed into a window on the opposite side of the street. He breathed a sigh of relief and reached up to poke at the aching spot on his skull, though thankfully it felt like she had not ripped out too much of his hair. Lash had recently also taken to teaching him the basics of magical self-defense, though he had never produced a force spell like that in her lessons. He supposed the anger he managed to call up around her just was nowhere near as strong as his current terror.

The road had gone suddenly silent, and he cut his eyes to the side to find everyone staring at him. His little scuffle with the attempted kidnapper had not been ignored. _Fake it till you make it_, he repeated in his head. "D-Don't touch me," he snapped at the woman lying splayed out on the dirty ground, wincing the tiniest bit at his stutter. No one else seemed to notice, however, and they all went back to their business, which he was quite happy about.

The blatant efforts not to get too close to him, on the other hand? Not so much.

With a sigh, he shrugged his shoulders and kept on his way. At least it was better than getting shoved around and attacked by half-rotting people. As he stepped deeper into the gloom and farther from the entrance, more people started revealing themselves. Shops also popped up with greater frequency, though the contents they put on display were disconcerting at best. This road had a pet store that was a dark reflection of the two he had spotted earlier, its cages filled with enormous black spiders and orange-striped snakes that hissed warningly at him with all three of their heads as he walked past. A candlemaker proudly advertised his wares, and while Harry did not know what Fomenting Philter or Clastic Acid were, he highly doubted he needed candles made out of them. Another apothecary, and this one smelled just as bad as the last had.

Thankfully, he eventually walked past the business section of the street, and with it all the horror on display. The unfortunate part about that was that upon entering the residential section, the twisting alley became a veritable maze of crossroads and side streets, the flats all looking equally drab and rundown. After a few turns to check that there was nothing interesting awaiting him here, he decided he had seen more than enough.

Now how did he get out?

Playing up his confidence again, Harry spun on his heel and strode back the way he had come. Left, left, then two rights and another left, and he was back in the main street… that looked nothing like he had seen on the way in but was exactly the same as the other residential streets. "Or did I come in right, left, _right_, right, right?" he wondered. So he needed to go right, right… left? Or was it right again? For a moment, he considered attempting a map of which turns he had taken, but then he shook his head. Surely he couldn't get too lost; it wasn't like he was that deep in this part of town.

* * *

Lash delicately pulled herself out of Harry's memory and gave it a pleased nod. She had been working with him periodically on his mindscape, how to form it and how to protect its contents. It was slow and delicate work – stable and effective mindscapes could take years to perfect – but it was essential for Harry to be able to defend his mind from intruders even if he never planned to use psychomancy extensively himself.

Assuming he encountered any wizard who used the kind of psychomancy she was familiar with, that was.

And just like that, her good mood vanished. She had done her best not to think about it too hard, but there was no point in putting it off any longer. She had no clue what was going on anymore. For the last few months, she had rationalized and ignored the discrepancies she observed, so sure in what she thought she knew that she did not trust her own senses, and now that was coming back to hurt her.

The entire Veela debacle should have been the first hint that something was wrong. No wizard could possibly use magic without also being able to open a Way to the Nevernever, yet Harry somehow could, and for an entire race to escape the magical world's eye? She had assumed they were newcomers, a semi-human line of possibly curse-bound origin, much like loup-garou, that simply had not been around long enough to have much knowledge of the greater world or maybe primarily had contacts among black wizards and so had never been told of the White Council. It was such a nice and neat theory – provided she ignored Lisette's comments about Harry's method of teleportation, at least – and it was also one that did not threaten to upset any paradigms.

Then there was the World Below. Another society she had never heard of, speaking a language that held a tenuous connection to Proto-Uralic but no similarities to any living tongues she knew. The dwarves were also a long-standing group, as demonstrated by their adaptations to the near-lightless conditions of their home, but again there was a logical explanation. They had claimed to be isolated for a substantial period of time, and considering she had no idea where they were located, there was the possibility that some local human groups had known about them but were slaughtered before that information could be spread to the wider world. A tiny and weak possibility, admittedly, but possible nonetheless.

And since her detailed knowledge about the happenings of the mortal world had been somewhat… fragmented… prior to the Denarians' escape from Hell, she knew there existed the chance that she had missed a few things. Still, two hidden civilizations discovered in as many months? It should have beggared belief, and combined with Harry's incapacities with the more delicate and nuanced aspects of magic, there was no reason she should have missed that the world was repeatedly refusing to conform to her expectations.

No, she realized, there was a very simple reason that she had missed it. Pride. She might not be Lasciel herself, but she held all the Webweaver's knowledge and memories, and apparently her predecessor's ego, too. She was among the most intelligent of the Denarians, arguably the most knowledgeable in terms of sheer breadth of information. Of course she had ignored the truth when it conflicted with what she knew, for how could she be wrong?

"Except now reality has decided to give me a wake up call," she whispered, leaning against the hard, cold surface behind her. "Uriel told me not to cling to my past as Lasciel; was that just a general statement, or did the Almighty tell him that this would happen? Is there any way to know for sure?

"But that is unimportant in comparison to my other issues. This is not just a different world, but an entirely alternate reality; there is no other explanation for why magic itself is behaving so differently. I did not even know that such a thing existed, nor do I think any other Created being does." She giggled, the sound bordering on insane even to herself. "Though that explains why Uriel hasn't come to check on me and scold me for toying with the Dursleys. He does not know who I am. Is there even a Uriel in this new existence? I don't know."

Realizing what she was doing, Lash stopped and tried to force her mind back into a semblance of normalcy. Now, in the alley, at Privet Drive; something strange was happening to her, and it was terrifying. She was well-practiced at imitating human expressions and behaviors, little things that made mortals consider her more approachable and trustworthy, but her display of anger that morning had not been scripted and measured. She had lashed out in fury before she realized she was doing it. Her emotions were changing, becoming more labile. Not just wrath, but joy as well; she had laughed honestly more during these four months with Harry than she had with all four of her previous hosts combined.

What was it Dresden had said to her the night she gave her life for his? That he, being human, was mutable, and so it fell to reason that her ties to him made her just as mutable in return? And had she herself not compared Harry to a lump of clay ready for the sculptor's hand? Her mind was becoming more human by the day, and Uriel had mentioned that already she was more human than she was angel. Was this her fate, to become a human with all their weaknesses and yet still possess her memories of eternity as the angel she could never be again?

She did not have the chance to ponder that question too extensively. Above her, the pinpricks of light went out and enveloped the entire room in shadow, and she brought her head back to bang it against the wall. "What nonsense have you gotten tangled up in this time?"

For all that the space was dark, it was merely the darkness that came with a lack of light, not that of absolute nothingness. This point was made clear when a second, deeper wave of black swept through the room, and the walls shattered and spun as they reformed into a delicate web of silver. Harry's mindscape was appropriate for his level of training, and it would only become stronger as he became more practiced, but never would it hold up against the mental might of a Fallen. For all that she was devolving, that much was still true.

Soaring over to a point her long familiarity with her own mind let her find with ease, she let Harry's memory wash over her. When it fell away, she sighed as her head drooped. "Dear Lord, Harry, only you could get yourself in such a mess. Even Dresden had more sense than this."

* * *

After two hours, Harry was regretting his earlier bravado.

"Bollocks," he snarled, kicking an empty bottle down the street. He had no idea where he was. Worse, every time he tried to backtrack, he just wound up confusing himself even more. After the first twenty minutes, he had gotten tired of wandering around and attempted to teleport back to Number 4, but for some reason any time he tried that he was 'bounced', for lack of a better word, back to where he was and given a nasty headache besides. How in the world was he supposed to get out of this place?

"Hey, boy, you lost?"

Harry glanced up at the speaker. It was a young man standing on the upstairs balcony, maybe in his late teens if the pimples dotting his tanned face were anything to go by and foreign judging by the accent. Spanish, maybe? What really caught his eye was not the dark hair or even the ripped and ruffled white shirt, however, but the gold hoop glinting in his ear. "No, I'm good."

"Right. And you walked back and forth past this house five times just for fun." The man shook his head and slipped into the house for a few seconds before coming back out, and then he vaulted over the railing. Harry took in a breath to scream for help, already seeing him splattering onto the ground, but the man landed heavily on the cobblestones and stood as if nothing of note had just happened. While he caught his breath from the fright, the stranger only laughed. "You sure scare easy, kid. You been locked up in your house your whole life or something?"

"No, I'm just new to all this," he answered distractedly. He was eyeing the enormous black boots and heavily patched trousers he had not spotted when he first saw the man, and he barely withheld a chuckle of his own. The teen was dressed so much like a pirate he almost expected a parrot to land on his shoulder at any moment! "Didn't even know I was a wizard until a few months ago."

The brunet rubbed his hairless chin thoughtfully. "Really? Always nice to find a Muggleborn. Well, welcome to the Wizarding World," he said, sticking his hand out for Harry to shake. "Now how about some help getting back to Diagon? I been coming around here off and on for five years, and I still get lost in these streets sometimes."

"Sure, thanks," Harry happily agreed. He was tired of being lost. Falling in step behind the young man, he asked, "What you called me, Muggleborn? What does that mean?"

"You do magic but your parents don't. That's why you're wandering around here on your own, isn't it? Mugs can't come into Diagon without a lot of help." Ducking his head down to fit inside a small tunnel that not even Harry could have walked into standing upright, the man waved for him to come along. "There's a shortcut through here. Beats walking all the way around, that's for sure."

Eyeing the tunnel nervously, Harry weighed his options for a moment before doing as he was bidden. This guy was his only way back, after all, and it was not as though there were any hints of danger. His nerves were just acting up. He had to squat down to fit, and he was soon waddling up to his guide. The teen laughed a bit at his odd walk before leading him deeper in. Halfway to the light at the other end of the tunnel, Harry felt a tingle brush over his skin, and he demanded, "What was that?!"

"You felt that?" the man asked in surprise, turning to stare at him with golden eyes. No, not gold, Harry realized after blinking in surprise, just the same light hazel they had been before. The teenager gave him an approving nod. "Got good senses, you do. Those are always useful."

Speaking of senses, Harry's nose was insisting that something had changed. The air had lost some of the industrial sting he had noticed ever since arriving at the marketplace and instead had a cleaner, salty smell, not unlike how the Mediterranean Sea smelled those three days he had spent in Toulon. Had they somehow arrived at the ocean?

The man exited the tunnel and winced playfully at Harry's glare. "Okay, maybe not a _'shortcut'_, really, but it is easier to transfer straight to Diagon than navigate that mess of roads. Safer, too; I don't like chancing my purse to those pickpockets on Knockturn." He smiled and turned to stare at something with a lusty sigh. "Besides, who could resist a chance to marvel at such a beauty?"

With a shrug, Harry obliged his strange new acquaintance, and then he stared in shock. When he thought that the young man looked like a pirate, he meant it as a joke, but there in front of him was a real-life wooden sailing ship! The vessel rocked slightly with the waves, the breeze ruffling the pure white sails, and though he could not see onto the deck, he could still hear commands being shouted back and forth in a fluid tongue. "Wow. That's amazing. But how does no one notice a ship like that sitting here?"

"You mean the Mugs?" said the teen contemptuously. "They don't look properly, do they? It's all empty bay to them. You'd think they'd at least hear us, especially when we're singing at night, but they don't listen right, either. You can't count on a Muggle to notice anything."

"You might be surprised by what regular people can notice when they want to," he muttered in reply. Lash had told him a few things about the witch hunts of medieval Europe and the number of wizards they had killed, and then there were the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm that were supposedly less bedtime stories and more warnings about what was out there waiting for unsuspecting humans. Looking for less contentious ground, he switched back to their previous discussion and asked, "Is it yours?"

"I wish. My uncle is her captain, but he's teaching me how to run her. Well," the young man corrected himself with a shrug, "when I'm not acting as a deck hand and general errand boy, that is." A crafty smile grew on his face then. "Hey, kid, you want to see what she looks like up close? Like standing on the deck close?"

Harry's eyes widened. A chance to see what a pirate ship looked like in person; how could he pass that up? "You'd really let me on board? And your uncle wouldn't mind?"

"Absolutely. And Uncle will be fine with it so long as you pass the test." The young man pointed out over the water toward the rear of the ship. "There's a flag at the stern that is said to be charmed so only those worthy to sail the seven seas can see what's on it. If you can, no one aboard will have a complaint about you coming on up."

Excited beyond words, he held his hands over his eyes to cut down on the glare from the sun and squinted. "The blue flag?" he asked, getting a hum of agreement. "There's something yellow in the middle, but I can't quite make it out from over here. Can I get closer or—"

Stars danced in front of him when a heavy something smashed hard into the back of his head, and then he knew nothing but black.

* * *

**Wait, you thought this was going to be a warm, light-hearted story? Heh eh… no.**

**And if you want to know something disconcerting, I lifted the young sailor's condemnation of Muggle senses from book 3, specifically from Stan Shunpike. And Harry thought he couldn't possibly be a Death Eater. Pshaw.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	7. The Demeter

**Brint:** Except that it is _never_ stated whether Shunpike was actually a DE, a sympathizer, or Imperiused. Harry assumes it is either the third or that he was falsely imprisoned the same way Sirius was, but that's an assumption made with no actual knowledge of the course of events that led up to it. A five-minute conversation about an escaped convict is not enough to determine someone's character, which was the only explanation Harry ever offered for why Shunpike _'couldn't'_ be a Death Eater.

**I can say without a single doubt that this is my favorite chapter so far in this story. Part of that is that I got it all done in something like eight hours, and part of it is that it feels the most **_**Dresden Files**_**-esque.**

**Oh, and related to what I said to Brint above, I posted a new one-shot a few days ago. It's closer to a character study than anything, but it's something that's been rolling around in my head for a while, and I'm glad to finally get it out.**

**Disclaimer:** Did the Muggleborn and Muggle-raised students form a group, even informally, to educate themselves on the strange new world they had entered? If not, I don't own the Harry Potter franchise; it belongs to J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Press, Warner Bros., and whomever else she sold the rights to.

* * *

**Chapter 7  
****The Demeter**

Awareness came slowly to Harry. _Did Uncle Vernon throw me back in the cupboard?_ It certainly seemed like it; his back felt like one big bruise, and the hard floor was doing it little good. And his head! Had Aunt Petunia bashed him with her frying pan again? And of course stretching out was futile, what with the cold bars hemming him in…

Wait. His cupboard did not have bars.

The memory of his most recent adventure returned, and his eyes shot open. The sight that greeted him was most undesired: a sky painted purple by the encroaching night, broken every five inches by shiny steel bars. Slowly he pushed himself to a seated position and stared at the cage he was trapped inside. "Where am I?"

"A boat."

Harry turned to see the speaker. In the cage next to his huddled a blonde girl about his age, her knees drawn up to her chest and her arms holding her in a tiny ball. When she said nothing more, he glanced around, his fear growing steadily. They were not the only people stuck there; at least a dozen cages were scattered over the ship's deck, and in every single one of them sat a kid or two. He turned back to the girl. "How long have we been here?" he asked, but she just shook her head and ignored him.

"You've been here since earlier this afternoon," someone else said. Shifting his eyes over, Harry found another cage, this time containing a black boy sitting with his legs crossed under him. "They threw me in here this morning, and a few other kids at the same time." The boy nodded at the girl. "She's been here the longest, or at least she's the one who will still talk who's been here that long. Two or three days, someone else told me."

Another glance showed the proof of that statement. The girl's pigtails were dirty and disheveled, and her arms and what little of her forehead he could see were the bright red of a building sunburn. Harry turned back to the other boy. "Who kidnapped us? Why?"

"I don't know. All I know is that I was at the park when a man came up to me and wanted help finding his lost dog. Had a picture and everything. Always thought those kids they told us about in their 'Stranger Danger' lessons were dumb, and now look at me," the boy said with a cracked laugh. After a moment, he looked closer at Harry. "You're taking this really well. I was a wreck when I first woke up."

Harry hesitated a moment and then shrugged. "This isn't too much smaller than the cupboard my relatives used to lock me up in." The boy stared at him in shock, and he hastily added, "Besides, today isn't the first time something strange has happened to me. We'll figure out some way to get free."

And the first step of that plan was to slip out of this cage. He could still feel the slight but familiar weight of his focus ring on his left thumb, and he glared at the patch of wooden deck immediately in front of his cage. "_Darbas_." The world closed in on him and engulfed him in darkness, but before he could even get the first nervous breath out, something hard smashed into his face. The bars reappeared right in front of his eyes before gravity took control again and dropped him heavily to the rough plywood covering the floor of his cage.

"Hey, how did you do that?!"

He ignored the astonished cry of the other boy and shook his head clear of the ringing filling his ears. Why had his ghosting refused to work? No, he realized, it had not refused to work; something caused it to fail. "The cage," he breathed in horrified comprehension. He had teleported while both outside and inside a house, but never had he tried it when he was trapped somewhere. If he couldn't get out on his own two feet, he supposed it made a strange sort of sense that he couldn't teleport away, either. At least, it made sense if he didn't think about it too hard.

If that were the case, he needed some other way of freeing himself and the other kids around him. Inspecting the edges, he quickly found a heavy padlock keeping the top closed. He grabbed hold of the lock and focused his fear and the rapidly building anger, not at all a hard task in this situation. "_Bats'vel_."

The lock rattled, but when he gave it a tug, it stayed stubbornly attached.

_Okay, now I'm starting to worry_. "Lash," he whispered, "a little help here?"

A soft puff of air brushed against his right cheek. "I am here. What do you wish for me to do?"

"I can't open the lock. Why isn't my magic working?"

Lash sighed, and with the angel still unreal, he could only imagine that she was shaking her head. "Hold the lock again. What do your senses tell you?"

He grabbed the padlock again and concentrated, trying to force himself into the same state of mind he had first discovered in the Black Forest and Lash had tried to refine in the months since. For close to a minute, he could not find anything strange, but then a tiny muttering reached his Inner Ear. Though he could not make out any words, the tone was one of… stubbornness? "I don't know. I feel something, but…"

"There is a spell on it keeping it locked. That is what deflected your spell." Lash hesitated for a moment. "If I am reading it correctly, there should be a key that holds the partner to this spell. Without that, I could possibly work out how to unravel the spell, but I know not how long that would take."

"We're stuck here until we find some way of getting rid of that lock," he reminded her. "Time is all we have. I'll try to get the key somehow while you figure out the spell."

"You aren't crazy, are you? Because I don't want to be stuck next to a psycho."

His eyes squeezed shut at that. He was so used to talking out loud to Lash that he had never given much thought to how it might look to someone who didn't know about magic. "Just trying to get us out of here."

The black boy snorted, and Harry looked over again to find him leaning back against the bars and watching him with very little worry considering what he had said. "Good luck with that. If no one else has gotten out, I don't know how you think you're going to do it, Psycho."

"My name isn't Psycho. It's Harry," he retorted. The other boy said nothing, so Harry jerked his head at the blonde girl. "What's her name?"

"Sally… something. Sally-Mae? Sally-Anne!" he said with a snap of his fingers. He gave Harry a smile; it was weak, but it was still there. "I'm Dean, in case you were wondering. And you're Psycho."

"Told you, not Psycho." Dean just shook his head with that hesitant smile still peeking through his earlier despair, so Harry moved onto to his less irritating conversation partner. "Sally-Anne?"

The girl flicked fearful eyes at him and looked down at her knees again.

"Sally-Anne, look at me." When he had her attention, he smiled as friendly as he could. "Hi. I'm Harry."

"…Hi."

The response was weak, but it was progress. "I know you're scared," he said gently, as if the way she was shaking would not tell anyone who laid eyes on her that she was absolutely terrified. "I'm scared, too, but right now I need your help if I'm going to help you."

Sally-Anne looked away before answering, "I can't. It won't work. Beth tried to get out, and it just made them mad. They took her away, but then she didn't come back."

Well, that was at least mildly horrifying. He considered pushing her on that – after all, if they didn't try to get out, then they would be stuck there for no one knew how long – but even he could see that doing so would do no good. "That's fine. You don't need to do anything." Sally-Anne took that as permission to go back to studying her dirty knees, but she looked up again when he continued, "But I need to know what's going on. If they get mad, it'll all be on me."

"I don't know. They just said that someone would snatch me up before they even let me out because people liked blondes. I don't know anything else." And now she was crying. Wonderful. He didn't know what to do with crying girls. She snorted the snot back in her nose and bawled, "I just want to go home! I just want my Mummy and Daddy!"

Wincing, he reached out to give her a pat on the shoulder. Maybe that would help?

"Quiet down, you lot!"

Harry whirled around, grunting when his wrist banged against the steel bars of Sally-Anne's cage before he could pull his hand back. He knew that voice.

Sure enough, the young man he had followed out of the alley was walking around a stack of crates toward them, a frown on his face and a red bandana covering his black hair. The man gave them all a hard look and a nod. "That's better. Just keep quiet, and everything'll go a whole lot easier."

If that wasn't the perfect invitation for a little bit of trouble-making, Harry didn't know what was. "Let us go!" he demanded.

"Ha, you've still got a little of that fire in you, don't you?" The teen walked closer and squatted down to be closer to eye-level with him. "A good nose and a strong soul. You keep those, kid. Where we're going, those will be a big help to you, the only things you can count on until you learn how to do whatever it is your buyer wants you to do." A smile appeared then, but for all that this was a bad guy, it was not the scary grin complete with maniacal laughter Harry was used to from Dudley's cartoons. It was just a normal smile. The young man raised one hand and rubbed his thumb and first two fingers together. "Not to mention, a little spirit in you means a whole lot more _dinero_ for us, you know?"

Lash huffed. "Of course. Greed, the most common motivator for any mortal's action."

"But why are you doing this?! Where are you taking us?!"

The slaver shrugged. "It's nothing personal, kid. The big plantation owners in South America? They love Muggleborns, can't get enough of 'em. I mean, think about it; young wizards without parents or friends who can look for them and who don't have any way of escaping once they're bought and paid for? Where could they possibly get better labor than that? In fact," the young man said, leaning closer and lowering his voice, "I've heard that some of them will literally work you kids to death, but that's not too common. Or, at least, it doesn't happen all that quickly. You'll be fine, long as you don't cause too much trouble."

Harry stared at him in mute terror.

"Don't give me that look," the pirate said with a frown. "I told you, it's all economics. There's a demand for Muggleborns over there, there's a good supply over here, and someone somewhere is eventually going to get one to the other. If it's not us, it'll be someone else, so we might as well jump in on it and make a little profit in the process."

He had nothing to say to that. This was all so wrong, so _evil_, and this teenager was just standing there like it was the most natural thing in the world. Who thought like that?! It was _slavery_. The man had even said that kids, kids who had done nothing wrong at all, were dying from being worked into the ground, but all he cared about was making money!

If this was the kind of greed Lash had witnessed over the ages, it was no wonder she had such a poor opinion of humans in general. He was more surprised she had agreed to be his guardian angel in the first place!

"What kinds of things will we have to do?" he asked in a shaky voice.

The man – no, Harry decided, he was going to be Bandana Boy from now on; Lash had told him how one of her humans, Dresden, had a habit of giving his enemies nicknames to make himself less afraid of them, and right now, Harry _really_ needed to not be so scared – shrugged. "Lots of things. Most of you are probably going to the fields. There's all sorts of stuff to be planted and harvested, stuff your owners can't have Muggles working with either because they can't do it properly or because it needs wizards to handle it for it to be properly magical. You, personally? You look like a fighter, the never-say-die type," Bandana Boy laughed. "I expect some trainer's going to see you and take you off our hands to turn you into something awesome for one of the arenas. They have gladiator matches in those places, and it's dangerous, yeah, but the really good ones get famous. If you can survive the first couple of years, you've got nothing to worry about."

That didn't sound like anything he wanted any part in, but in looking away, his eyes fell on the shivering form of Sally-Anne. "What about her?" he finally asked. "She said something about blondes being special?"

Bandana Boy looked at Sally-Anne as well. "Yeah, blondes down there are considered exotic. In one way, it's a good thing; instead of the arena or the fields, she'll be sold as a house-slave, and that's an easier job than any of you boys are going to have. But since she'll be so pretty once she gets a bit older…" He grimaced, and though he tried to wipe the expression away, he was not fully successful. "Well, I'd be surprised if some young stud doesn't eventually see her and decide she would be better used for something other than household chores, if you catch my drift."

"I think so." And Harry really, really wished he didn't. Sally-Anne understood it, too, because she immediately whimpered and curled up into an even tighter ball. Apparently tired of the conversation, Bandana Boy stood up and turned around to walk away, and that was when Harry saw it: a big, ugly, metal key, black like the padlock on their cages, hanging from the slaver's belt. If he could just get ahold of that—

Bandana Boy disappeared behind the same crates as before, and his opportunity was lost. "Lash, _please_ tell me you have something."

"It takes longer than that to break down a brand-new spell, even for me," she snapped, appearing in a flurry of light. She pressed her back against the crates and shook her head with a sigh. "Give me an hour or two, and I should be able to do something with it, but until then…"

"What do you mean, it's a brand-new spell?" Lash grimaced at his question, and his heart sank. This could not be good. "Lash?"

The angel grit her teeth for a moment before she said, "I'm sorry, Harry. I thought I knew what I was doing, but I am just as lost as you."

He blinked a couple of times as he tried to process that. "I don't understand. Why are you lost? This is magic; you know this. You're teaching me, so you have to know more than I do."

"That is just it. I know about the magic I have studied, the spells and rituals I have observed or devised myself." She pushed herself away from the crates to kneel in front of him. "But now? The reason your magic was so strange to me is not because you are different, but because this _world_ is different than the one I have walked. And the Veela, the dwarves, that Diagon marketplace? I know nothing about any of them." With a bark of unhappy laughter, she lowered her head and broke their gaze. "There is only one explanation that I can come to. When I was sent to watch over you, I was sent to a completely new reality."

"But what you've taught me has worked!"

"Has it?" Lash looked up at him again. "Have you opened a Way? Brewed a potion? Summoned a spirit from the Nevernever? I taught you a few tricks with Evocation, but that is all I have to show for my efforts. No, Harry, I sought out to make you a great wizard, possibly the greatest the world has ever known, but now I cannot. I failed."

Not a tear spilled from her eye, but Harry knew she was upset, even more than Sally-Anne had been. How could she not be? He had thought earlier that very day about how nice it would be to have an older wizard to talk to and learn from, someone he could ask questions about the new culture he had found himself in, but could his worries possibly compare to Lash's? He had known about magic for four months while she had been studying it since the dawn of time. To find out that everything she knew was suddenly different; of course she would be lost and confused.

But maybe it wasn't entirely hopeless. What if what she really needed what he had needed when she came into his life? What if she just needed a friend?

Harry reached out and gently squeezed her shoulders. "Maybe you're right. Maybe you can't do what you wanted to do. But I don't care." Lash twitched under his hands. "You cared for me when no one else did. You helped me when no one else would. You are the only one who has ever stood by me, and even if another guardian angel, one who could do everything you promised me you would do, came up to me and offered to take your place, I wouldn't take him up on it. You're my angel," he sniffed, brushing a couple of tears off his cheek with his shoulder so she would not catch him crying, "and I wouldn't give you up for the world."

A strangled laugh came from behind the curtain of blonde hair that hid her face, and finally she looked up at him. Her wet eyes moved up and down, examining him as though she had never seen him before. "Precious child," she murmured, so softly that he doubted she meant for him to hear it at all, and she raised one hand to rest against his cheek. "So young, yet noble and gentle already. What folly of His abandoned you into my care?"

Dean noisily cleared his throat behind Harry. "Psycho, you're really starting to scare me."

"And so ends that heartfelt moment," Lash grumbled as their hands dropped. A deep breath, and then she was all business once again. "You noticed the key that man possessed. Unless you want to while away another hour or two at the least inside this cage, you will need to take it from him, preferably in such a way that he cannot alert the rest of the crew to your escape. Additionally, we may not have that time to waste. Unless they have more cages in a lower hold that they plan on bringing out, they have all the prisoners they plan to take on this voyage. In their shoes, my plan would be to depart under the cover of darkness and make for open water as soon as possible."

A time limit. Great. "Get the key off Bandana Boy, take him down, free everyone, and get out of here, all before they leave. That should be simple enough," he muttered sarcastically. "The key isn't the hard part; it's beating him up before he can call anyone else over. Suggestions?"

"Fling a rock or something else suitably hard at his head?" He sighed at her falsely bright tone. "That is the only method I can think of with the skills you currently possess…" Her eyebrows rose, and she corrected herself, "No, I take that back. There may be something else you can do."

"Well?" he impatiently demanded.

She smirked. "You just have to be a little tricky."

After she explained the plan to him, and he explained the relevant portions to Dean, they were ready to spring their trap. The dark-skinned Muggleborn rolled his shoulders and cleared his throat dramatically, and then he called out in a fearful voice, "Hey, somebody! Anybody! Help us! We're being kidnapped!"

"Will you shut up?!" Bandana Boy yelled after a couple of seconds of this. He stomped over with a fierce scowl on his face, and in one hand he held a short club that he was thumping into the palm of the other hand. Probably the same one Bandana Boy had used on him, Harry noted. He quickly let that thought drift away, focusing on the state of mental emptiness he was trying to maintain. The slaver glared at them all with a gimlet eye, and then his gaze fell on the lone empty cage and his face paled. "What happened to that one?!"

"I don't know," Dean answered in a voice that Harry hoped sounded appropriately scared and confused to Bandana Boy; it certainly didn't sound like it to him. Pointing at him, Dean continued, "He was there, and then he was gone!"

Beginning to panic now, the slaver ran up to the cage and peered inside with eyes wide in disbelief. This was the best chance he was going to get. Harry let the veil hiding him drop and stared back into Bandana Boy's eyes, his arms raised as high as they could and his palms aimed at the man's head. "_Zhamanel_!"

He still had not yet mastered how to control the speed his kinetic spells gave objects, and so the slaver's face slammed into one of the steel bars with all the force of an angry bull. Bright red blood poured from his broken nose and splattered onto Harry's face, and then he snarled the incantation for his second spell. "_Herranal_!" Bandana Boy's head whipped backward with a sickening crack, flinging blood onto Dean who immediately screeched like a little girl, and the man fell back. His head hit the ground with a low-pitched thud, and he was still.

At the sounds, a warbling voice called out in the same foreign language Harry had heard when the teen first brought him to the ship. "Control!" Lash barked, and she vanished while his entire body itched. His mouth opened to spew out a long sentence in that same strange tongue. The unknown speaker said something in reply, and then his body was under his control again. "I bought you a little time," Lash whispered in his ear, "but only a little. Hurry."

He nodded and stretched his hand out between the bars as far as he could, and his fingertips just barely brushed the tip of the key. Shifting a bit and jamming his shoulder against the cage, he tried again. This time he pinched the key's teeth, and smiling at his success, he tugged hard against the string attaching it to Bandana Boy's trousers. One, two, and then the iron key was his.

Several of the other kids had started whispering, their spirits rising at the chance to escape, and he whirled around and held a finger up to his lips. "Ssh!" Once they were all quiet, he slipped the key into the padlock and carefully twisted it, and the lock popped open. Pulling it off and setting it and the key onto he deck, he pushed the lid of his cage up as quietly as he could and stood; a quick step to straddle the edge and another to get off, and then he lowered the lid back down. He was free!

He was not quite so careful with Dean's cage, sacrificing some caution for speed, but soon the black boy was out as well and he moved on to Sally-Anne. The blonde girl nearly ruined the whole thing for them then; as soon as she was standing, she glanced over at the unconscious slaver and slapped her hands over her mouth to muffle her shriek.

Harry spun, the key raised over his shoulder like a knife, and then he saw what had scared her so badly. When he first met Bandana Boy, and every time since, the young man had been just that: a young, _human_, man. Now he wasn't. The teen's skin had been replaced by beige fur, and his _head_…

He blinked his eyes to make sure they were not playing tricks on him. That looked like a deformed hamster's head attached to the man's shoulders!

Something poked him in the back, and Lash appeared squatting next to the person… creature… thing with one eyebrow raised imperiously. Harry crept closer, grimacing as the new perspective did little to soothe his jangled nerves. "Lash?"

"He was South or Central American," she explained, though she had eyes only for the terrifying oddity before them. "The ancient peoples of that region had myths about individuals that looked like people with the heads of jaguars; those entities were given the rather uncreative name _'were-jaguar'_ by European scholars. But this is the first time I have ever found evidence of a were-_capybara_."

"Lash, we have to go!" he hissed. His eyes flicked almost of their own accord toward where he could hear the rest of the crew chattering. "You were the one who said we needed to hurry!"

That shook her out of her musings, and she nodded apologetically. "Yes, you are correct. I will ponder this issue once we are gone."

It took him a couple of minutes and not a few jolts of adrenaline when the other kids got too loud, but soon enough they were all clustered together at the front of the ship. Most of them were beyond relieved to finally be free, but some were still worryingly silent, eyes skittering furtively over the deck and mouths clamped shut tight. "I can't believe that actually worked," Dean whispered with a smile. "Now how are we supposed to get off this thing?"

Harry winced. "That… is a very good question." Going down the gangplank was right out; there was no way they could sneak all sixteen of them past the entire crew. He looked out to the piers in the distance, all of which were too far for them to reach before being caught, but closer to them he spotted a set of stairs built into the sea wall. Pointing at the stairs, he said in a voice much more confident than he felt, "Right there. We swim to the stairs, climb up, and run away until we find a phone or the police or something."

"But how are we supposed to get down? There's nothing to climb on," one of the girls asked.

Harry and Dean shared an uncomfortable look, and glancing at Sally-Anne showed that she had reached the same conclusion. "Jump?" the blonde asked in an uncertain whisper.

"Jump," Dean agreed.

"It'll be loud, but the waves hitting the wall should cover up some of the noise," Harry pointed out. "Everyone needs to jump and start swimming as fast as you can. If someone falls behind, don't wait up for them; just keep going. Remember, phone or bobbies or adults or _something_."

A boy, one of the nearly catatonic ones, let out a piercing scream of fright, and Harry whirled around to find the last thing he wanted to see. They had run out of time.

"_Herranal_!" he yelled, and his blast of force caught another of the hamster-faced pirates square in the chest and threw it into the mast. "Go!"

He was already running to the other side of the line of cages when the first splash reached his ears. Raising his hands to point at the stacks of crates that had been so helpful in hiding the slavers' true appearance, he turned them to his advantage now. The cone of kinetic energy he unleashed was greater than any he had ever thrown out before, and the heavy boxes flew away and crashed into the monsters coming after him.

A knife forged out of molten pain stabbed into the center of his head, and he dropped to one knee with a cry of pain. Lash had warned him of the dangers of pushing himself too far, had told him that it would leave him all but defenseless, so of course he had to push himself into that state when his life was on the line.

"Harry, come on!"

"I told you to go!" he shouted back. Dean gave him an agonized look before throwing himself off the deck.

It was just him and the monsters now.

"_Herranal_," he panted, but all his spell did was ruffle the nearest slaver's puffy shirt. He was out, completely drained. At least the others had escap—

"Don't you dare resign yourself to this!" His entire body tingled so fiercely that he feared that ants were going to start pouring out from under his skin, and Lash's voice commanded him, "You have my power; you have the environment. Use it! Harness that energy and hit them with everything you have!"

Everything he had? Well, there was one spell Lash had forbidden him from using until he got more practice in; he might as well use it now and hope he and Lash would still be around for her to scold him later. He gave them a weak smile as he tapped into the wellspring that was Lash's magic, and then he pulled to him all the energy he could find around him. A deep breath filled his lungs, and the beasts stalking warily toward him slowed as gusts of white mist poured forth from their mouths and the waterlogged wooden deck grew a thin layer of frost.

And then he let all that power go. "_Ayrvel_!"

What exploded from his hands was not a blast, not a cone, but a veritable _torrent_ of golden flames that swept over the monsters with the same fury as the sea. The counterforce from his attack shoved him backward to hit the cage behind him, the gargantuan spray of fire arcing up to hit the masts and the sails and set them ablaze. His last-ditch attack quickly petered out, lethargy spreading through his limbs and muddling his thoughts, and he let his head drop as his nose was filled by the smell of smoke and his ears by screams and splashes and crackles.

Lash snorted from beside him, body manifested once again. "The innocent have been saved against all odds, the villains have been driven away, you are still staring death in the face, and everything's on fire." She laughed. "I am dealing with Dresden all over again."

"Sorry," he slurred. This headache was terrible, and he was just so _tired_.

"No, but I will make you sorry if you let yourself burn to death after winning the battle. Up you get!" Her illusionary tug was unable to pull him to his feet, but he slowly pushed himself upright and staggered drunkenly to the low rail of the deck. "Hurry up, Harry. Or have you forgotten the ship burning down around you?" The railing banged into his shins, and then he was falling head-first into the bay.

Bubbles. Long streams of tiny bubbles drifted in front of him, coming out in ones and twos from his nose to fly for freedom toward the patch of wavering yellow in front of him, and he smiled. After all the terror and confusion he had had to deal with today, this little bit of peace was actually rather nice. Maybe he could just take a nap… just for a minute…

Something grabbed his outstretched arm and pulled, and his head broke the surface of the waves with a splutter. "All right, Psycho, I got you," his rescuer gasped, shifting Harry into a better grip and pulling him away from the burning boat. "You are _so_ lucky my Mum forced me to learn how to be a life guard when my little sisters were just starting to swim."

"I thought you… I said go. Why…?"

"I don't know how the hell you did all the crazy stuff you did back there, but there's no way I was gonna just let you hang back and get eaten by those things after you saved my skin," Dean retorted with a huff.

Harry grinned faintly. "Magic. I'm a wizard-in-training."

"I should tell you that you really are crazy if you believe what you just said, but it's hard to argue with it right now, what with the monsters and the disappearing and the bloody bonfire." Letting go of him for a moment to readjust his grip, Dean pulled him onto the bottom stair. Had they already reached it? Harry's vision swam as his eyes threatened to close. "The rest of them ran ahead to call the bobbies. Since I don't think anything's going to be chasing us for a while, we can catch up with them."

"You go ahead," Harry heard himself say. Since he had not thought of a single reply to what Dean had said, and honestly was not sure that he had understood everything, that could only be Lash speaking through him. "I think I'll just rest here for a little. That last bit took a lot out of me."

Dean looked down at him with a worried expression before eventually nodding. "Okay, you stay here. I'll go and tell the others where you are and grab a towel or something for a pillow and come back here."

"'Kay." The other boy ran up the stairs and vanished, and his mouth sighed. "Ready to go home, Harry?"

"Please." He was too exhausted even to pay attention to the discomfort of teleporting, and then he was falling onto his bed at Privet Drive. _Aunt Petunia's going to be furious if I don't change out of these clothes soon_, was the thought that ran through his head, and he giggled. "Lash? 'Sit okay if I go sleep now?"

His angel appeared next to him, smiling as she ran her hands through his sodden hair. "Yes, you may now sleep like the dead. You have most definitely earned it."

* * *

**One of the issues with the magic in Harry Potter being so… poorly elaborated on, I suppose is the best way to say it, is that we as fans run into situations where we just don't know how things are supposed to work. The limits of Apparation, such as while locked up as Harry is, is one such instance. The only evidence we have in canon either way is when he and Ron are locked up in the Malfoys' cellar in book 7, but that has the issue that suddenly it requires a wand, which Ron didn't have. Of course, not only was that little detail never mentioned in the actual lessons, it's also implied a couple of chapters earlier that Harry Disapparated himself and Hermione away from Nagini-Bathilda even after his wand had been broken by Hermione's **_**Confringo**_**, so who really knows how accurate that explanation was?**

**By the way, I hid a hint for next chapter in this update. Good hunting!**

**Silently Watches out.**


	8. Paris

**SixPerfections:** Nope, the slavers were "near-human beings", not wizards. Like centaurs and mermaids and Veela and dwarves, they have their own magics, but it's not the same as human magic.

**This, sadly, is the last chapter before we get to the canon timeline, and I must admit I had a lot of fun with these mini-adventures. It'll be something to keep in mind for the later years, I suppose.**

**Disclaimer:** Was Snape, despite his obvious ulterior motive for doing so, the only professor who warned the students about the humanoid creatures that would try to _eat them_ if given the chance? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 8  
****Paris**

Harry threw his book bag onto the floor and flopped face-first onto his bed. "I _hate_ revision time."

A laugh made him turn his head and glare daggers at Lash. The angel sitting on his desk proved immune to his attack, however, and instead she merely gave him an innocent smile. "Really? I never would have guessed."

"It's not funny. I know this stuff already, and we're going through it all again for two more weeks, and it's just so _boring_." He rolled over onto his back and stared at the ceiling. "There has to be something fun to do. Anything would be better than going to class."

He kicked his trainers off, and the faint tinkling of his new focus made him rethink what he had just said. Maybe not _'anything'_; he would rather not repeat the disaster that was his trip to that Diagon place and getting kidnapped by monsters. With a sigh, he sat up, and the motion set the charms to clinking again.

This focus was something he had started the day after that terrible experience two months previously, and it had taken six long weeks of work to finish it. It was a simple anklet made from a total of six strands of silver, tin, and bronze wire braided together, and dangling off three of those wires were silver charms shaped like the Hamsa hand, the triangular Eye of Providence, and a circle bearing the Eye of Horus. With it clasped around his left ankle, it gave him something not dissimilar to the Sight the wizards Lash once knew could use. It would not let him see a person's inner nature or find the threads of power that traversed the world, nor would it burn those sights into his memory forever, but what it would do was allow him to pierce through illusions or glamours like those capybara-hamster-pirates had used to hide their true appearances.

That was good enough for his purposes.

"Well, if you are so bored," Lash said, jerking him out of his reverie, "perhaps you should see what this contains."

She pointed to the surface of the desk next to her, and he followed her finger to find a letter laying there. "Who's that from?" he asked as he walked over and picked it up. The envelope was heavy, made from thick parchment, and it had just his name written on the front in black ink. Besides lacking a mailing address, it also had no stamp. "And how did it get here?"

"How am I supposed to know? I was not here when it arrived," she retorted.

With a nod, he tore the envelope and pulled out the two sheets of parchment. "It's from Aimée," he told her as he read, the mental toggle switching to French with no more effort than it had when Lash first downloaded her knowledge of the language into his brain. No one else in the house would be able to understand him, but he wasn't talking to them. "She says things have been normal in the colony, though her birthday was in early May and now she's mad that I didn't send her a present." Lash laughed at his grimace. "Um, the other girls are doing well… Oh, her aunt is having a baby! She… found some guy in a bar in Nice…"

He shuddered. He could have done without that reminder of the Veelas' unusual mating customs.

"Lisette told you how their kind did things when you first arrived," Lash reminded him. "You were the one who chose to become friends with Aimée afterwards."

"That's not the point." He shook his head and flipped to the last few lines of the letter on the second sheet. "The only other thing she wanted is to make sure I remembered I promised to come back sometime this month." A smile appeared on his face as an idea formed. "When I told her I'd be back in June, I didn't say it _had_ to be after the school year was over, did I?"

Lash sighed. "Are you seriously considering this?"

"Come on, Lash!" he wheedled. "You can't tell me that you haven't been even more bored this last week than I have."

"I have been bored by your classes since I first came to you."

"See? You need a break, too!" She just rolled her eyes at his comments. Ignoring the angel's disgruntlement, he pulled his shoes back on, and then he glanced at her again. "I keep expecting you to say something to convince me this is a bad idea or I need to study this weekend or something," he admitted slowly.

"If you expect it, then you clearly know that this is a poor use of your time," she replied in a saccharine voice. "However, I know you will do this despite whatever I say, and my options to hinder you are somewhat limited in that regard." With a dismissive flap of her hand, she said, "Do as you please."

That was all the permission he needed. He fiddled with the wooden ring around his thumb for a moment and visualized the courtyard that served as the Veela settlement's town square. Hopefully the focus ring and his practice with his magic over the last six months would make enough of a difference that he would not pass out as soon as he arrived. "_Darbas_."

The tight squeeze and absolute darkness of his teleportation was familiar to him now, and he took great pride that he was only slightly unnerved when he arrived in Toulon. The courtyard was filled with the platinum-blonde women who made up the colony's inhabitants, all of them pacing and whispering quietly. Were they waiting for something to start or—

Five wickedly sharp talons slashed at his face.

Despite what anyone else who was there that day would say later, his response was definitely a manly bellow and not a girlish shriek of terror. He threw himself backwards out of the claws' path, and his eyes moved from the hand that bore them down a white-feathered arm to the vicious bird-woman who was staring at him with pale blue eyes. "Harry," the thing rasped, its voice shards of glass scraping against gravel, and then it began _twisting_. Its pointed yellow beak receded into a regular nose and mouth, the feathers blurring into fair skin, and after a moment where a monstrous harpy had been stood Clarisse. "Now is really not a good time for you to be here," the woman said, glancing back at the bonfire burning merrily in the fire pit at the center of the yard. "Go home."

"What's going on?" he demanded. His voice was not so angry as scared, a response to the fear painting Clarisse's face. A second look around showed that the other women there were just as frightened, and he repeated, "What happened?"

Clarisse looked down at him. "The girls finished their classes yesterday, so today they went north on a shopping trip to Orléans. It's something we've all done dozens of times before. But when the girls split up and were running around…" Her fists clenched tightly, and the skin around her eyes again developed a feathery pattern. "Thralls found them."

Harry felt his heart skip a beat. Thralls, the slaves of the vampires. Vampires that the Veela had supposedly been at war with for centuries. "Are they okay? I mean, was anyone…?"

"Anne and Claudia were injured, but they were brought back and are healing," Clarisse answered slowly, "and two others were kidnapped." At his panicked expression, she licked her lips and continued, "Margaux and Aimée."

No. He took a deep, shuddering breath. "So what do we do?"

"_You_ will do nothing," Aimée's aunt ordered. "Pénélope and Yasmine followed the thralls, and two dozen of us met up with them as soon as we knew what was going on. If that is not enough, there are many adults who would join the fight before we allowed children to take part in this." Despite her proclamation, Harry noticed her face twisting in mute worry and her left hand rising to rest against her still-flat belly. She gave him a wry smile. "But it's just a few thralls and one, maybe two fledgling vampires. They should be back within the hour—"

The bonfire flared high with emerald flames and spat out the two squads of Veela rescuers. Harry's spirit rose when he saw them, and then it crashed to the ground. This was not a group of fighters marching home triumphantly. The women staggered forward, their brassy breastplates dented and torn and the deadly-looking swords they carried splattered with bright red blood. More importantly, they had no young girls with them.

Clarisse flicked her eyes over the crowd and rushed forward, Harry dogging her heels. "Where is Lisette?" she demanded. No one answered her, and she grabbed the nearest fighter and pulled her closer to growl, "Lisette and Melisande. Where. Are. They?"

The armored Veela hesitantly met Clarisse's eyes. "Melisande didn't make it."

She covered her mouth with her hand, and it took Harry an extra second to make the connection. That was, if he remembered right, the name of Margaux's mother. Burying the visible signs of her grief, she pressed on, "And Lisette?"

"We…" The other woman looked away. "We don't know. She was with the two scouts up ahead. We lost contact with them, and then there were too many for us to keep fighting."

"Too many?!" Clarisse snarled. "There were two dozen of you! How were there _'too many'_ for you to fight?!"

The warrior met her glare with one of her own. "This wasn't some lone vampire targeting easy prey! The thralls fled to the Catacombs!" With a faint gasp, Clarisse took a step back, but the other Veela was not yet finished. "They were waiting for us. Thirty, forty thralls, and ten amaroks backing them up. Five of us died just trying to escape. Five! We couldn't even go back for their bodies!" The armored woman turned away. "Lisette's gone, Clarisse. There's no way she could have survived. I'm sorry."

Clarisse fell to her knees, and then her hands rose and grabbed hold of one of the leather-and-steel flaps that made up the other Veela's armored skirt. "What about the children? Aimée and Margaux? We can't leave them there."

Gauntleted hands came down to gently pull free from the distraught woman's grasp, and the warrior shook her head. "We can't just rush into the heart of the vampires' territory. If we want to do that, we need time to plan, and we need to call in fighters from the other settlements. By the time we could do all that…"

Neither woman said any more, but Harry heard what went unsaid. By the time they could gather a large enough army together, his friend would already be dead. Clarisse dropped her head as she wept, and he took a step back before throwing himself headlong into his ghosting.

"What are you doing?" Lash demanded as he reappeared in front of the door to the shed they had claimed as his workshop. He said nothing in response, simply flung the door open and walked inside. "Harry, you had better not be planning to go into the Catacombs."

He cast his eye on the small torc that was still under production, silver and greened copper lacking the ethereal brightness his anklet had developed when it was fully enchanted, and shook his head. That was supposed to be his shield focus, but he had spent so much time and magic on his illusion-breaking focus that he had yet to finish it. Instead his eyes went to his other major project.

Lying on the bench he used as his main workspace was the sliver of blackthorn he had taken from the Black Forest. Over the last few months, he had worked on it off and on, slimming it down and shaping it how he wanted. Now it possessed a handle on one end, though the pommel was still just a rough-hewn half-sphere, and the other eight inches had been carved into a triangular blade with Nephilim runes running down each side. Lash, when she described what she had planned for it, had called it a 'thorn wand', but to him it looked more like a dagger than anything.

"Harry!"

He turned to face his angel. "You heard them. They're just going to leave Aimée there. They don't even intend to try again! I can't let that happen."

"They will leave her there because they know it is _suicide_ for them to attack a second time," Lash hissed. "Twenty-four trained warriors went in, and only sixteen came back. Do you truly think you are capable of fighting through possibly twice that number of thralls all on your own?"

"Only one way to find out," he muttered.

Without warning, his ring burst into flame, and he screamed as he pulled it off and threw it to the ground before cradling his burned hand to his chest. The fire surged forth and covered the bench, and from there it spread onto the walls. Harry covered his face with his uninjured arm to ward off the blast of heat and coughed as the thick, black smoke found its way into his mouth and down his throat. He stumbled back, hitting one wall and searching blindly for the open door.

"I told you that my options with which to hinder you were limited," Lash said in an ominous voice, "not that I had none. If you think that I will just permit you to throw your life away so foolhardily, you still have much to learn. You are not ready to fight the Black Court."

Opening his mouth and coughing on the smoke, he gasped, "I wasn't planning on fighting them!"

In the span of a heartbeat, the heat and smoke and pain vanished, and he cautiously lowered his arm. The shed was completely free of damage, as if it had never been on fire, and when he chanced a glance at his hand, it looked the same as it always had. His eyes landed on Lash, who stared at him silently for a few moments before she commanded, "Explain."

"The Veela went in as a war-party, and that's where they messed up." She quirked an eyebrow at him in an invitation to continue. "The vampires were waiting for them, or maybe they're always that well-defended, I don't know. What I do know is that they probably aren't expecting one person to slip through their defenses."

"Because attempting to do such a thing is the epitome of idiocy."

"Except I know things they don't," he argued. "If I hide myself under a veil, the thralls wouldn't be able to find me, and they won't attack if they don't know there's something to fight, will they?"

That finally pierced through Lash's disapproval, and she raised one hand to tap gently at the point of her chin. "Assuming that these thralls are anything like those of my world, they have little intelligence and physically are no different from a baseline human. They therefore would rely on their sight to identify threats. By using a veil, it _might_ be possible to slip past them undetected."

"And I have another advantage over them the Veela lack," he continued now that she seemed to be actually considering his plan. "If… No, _when_ I find Aimée and Margaux, I don't need to drag them to the entrance to the Catacombs. I can teleport directly from Paris to Marseilles, which means—"

"Which means, provided everything else works out as you wish, they will only know you were there after you have already saved the girls." He nodded happily. This was the best possible plan. "However, that is _if_ you can remain undetected by the thralls, _if_ no vampires are lurking around their latest prize, and _if_ there are no defenses over the nest like those that prevented you from leaving the residential area of Knockturn." She shook her head. "That is three more 'if's than I am comfortable with."

Harry slowly walked over to his ghosting ring and, when Lash did not set it on fire again, picked it up and replaced it around his thumb. "How would you go about saving them, then?"

At that, she was silent. Several seconds passed, but just when he was starting to worry, she sighed. "One mortal, trying to slip past an army of thralls to save two girls? There is no good way to do this."

"See? At least I've come up with a decent plan." The angel did not look at him, instead gazing – or, more accurately, glaring – at the door. He turned to the window and asked, "What's an amarok?"

"A giant wolf from Inuit folklore. There was no living creature with that name in my world, though judging from the similarities this reality's vampires have with the Black Court, I suspect they are some analogue to Darkhounds."

"So getting by those is going to be the hard part," he sighed.

"To an extent. Darkhounds hunt mainly by scent; as long as you disguise that and keep the veil up, you should have little difficulty." After a moment, she added, "Assuming they are truly Darkhounds and not something else entirely, that is."

"So veil, scent disguise…" Harry looked to her. "What else do we need?"

She nodded at the thorn wand. "Bring that with you. Fire will be your best friend in case things take a turn for the worse."

"I just hope it won't matter that it isn't attuned," he muttered. Attuning was the most difficult, time-consuming, and aggravating portion of creating a focus. Carving the runes was easy, but then he had to spend weeks imagining exactly what he wanted the focus to do and pushing his magic, suffused with that mental picture, into it. That was the only way to 'imbue' his intent into the item, which was how it simplified the casting process and let him do nothing more than tap into his emotions and say a word to let loose a spell, but again, it took a long time to do properly and always made him feel like he had wasted all that magic. It was only the usefulness of his ghosting ring that kept him from throwing his hands up and casting everything himself when he needed it. "Why do you like fire so much?"

"Fire is the great purifier." Now on more familiar ground, Lash explained, "It is connected to the dawn, which degrades all magics. A burst of fire on a cursed artifact, even short enough that it does not damage the object, can be enough to remove the spell. There is also a psychological impact in that it is a basic instinct for animals to flee from fire, and for all that humans like to think they are above the rest of Creation, they are animals, too. And," she added almost sheepishly, "as you found out with the pirates, it is extremely useful if you just want to destroy something."

He nodded as that memory crossed his mind, and then shivered at the terror that still lingered after her own use of it on him. Basic instinct was right.

"For what you are planning to do today, there is one more benefit. Black Court vampires are not living things; they are corpses, reanimated and maintained by magic. In addition to destroying the curse that gives them their mockery of life, fire will burn away their physical bodies like kindling." She smirked, the expression hard and cruel. "One blast of flame will, given enough time, destroy a vampire utterly."

Thinking on that, he picked up the thorn wand and pointed it at the dirt floor of the shed. "_Ayrvel_." Wisps of yellow flame licked around the edges of the wand without discoloring the wood, and a wimpy fireball, no bigger than an egg, spurt from the tip to fall to the ground. Harry grimaced and looked at her. "A couple of hours' attuning won't make any difference, would it?"

She sighed. "No, it would not. Bring it with you just in case, but let us hope it will not be needed. I will cast the spell to remove your scent before you arrive at the Catacombs, but I do not know how much help I can give you otherwise. Is there anything else you think you will need?"

_Ring, anklet, and wand_, he counted off in his head. _No point in bringing the torc. But how am I going to find Aimée in the maze of tunnels underneath Paris?_

An idea came to him, and he looked up at Lash. "We need to make a quick stop at Toulon before we go to Paris. I need a hairbrush."

* * *

A crack like thunder split the air, and Harry appeared in the middle of the stone walls. Immediately he felt Lash taking over his body, and she worked a silent spell before returning control to him. Footsteps pounded toward him from both ends of the hallway; his heart beating like a rabbit's, he forced himself into the blank state of mind that accompanied invisibility. "_T'ak'un_."

Two women, wearing rough-spun tunics and threadbare breeches, barged into the hallway and stared at each other for a few seconds. Harry took several long, shallow breaths, and eventually the thralls turned around and walked back the ways they had come.

"That was way too close," he muttered to himself as he let the veil drop. Still, he was in; now came the tricky part. He pulled a small piece of chalk he had stolen from Aimée's room out of his pocket and drew a circle around himself, then touched his finger to it and mentally commanded it to close, almost like he was shutting a door. His magic flexed at that, and he had to catch himself before the sudden nausea made him break the circle. "Ugh. I hate this spell."

"Clearly we will need to practice it more when you return home," Lash said, appearing outside the circle. He gave her an ugly look, but she was unmoved. "We do not have the luxury of time here, Harry. Just do this like you did a couple of weeks ago, and we can move on."

"Right, right. Here goes nothing." From the pocket that had not held the chalk, he took a thin steel chain and a comb with two locks of hair on it, one on each end. He unwound the hair at the end where he had broken off a couple of teeth and weaved it through the links of the chain. Focusing on his memory of the Veela in question, he whispered, "_Khuzarku shun_," and dragged his fingers through the chalk circle.

The chain jumped and twitched in his left hand for a second, then it swung ever so slightly away from him toward one of the walls.

"Gotcha," he said with a smile. The comb and chalk went into a pocket, and then he threw his veil back around him before walking in the direction of the hallway that was closer to where the chain was pointing. That was the only problem with using a tracking spell: it pointed directly at whatever he was looking for, which would be great if he were in the middle of a field but was far less useful when he was stuck wandering through old tunnels.

He walked through the catacombs, his right hand trailing along the walls to help guide him. The Catacombs were dark, lit only by torches spaced widely apart, and his vision was only further hindered by the veil he was under leeching a great deal of the color from his surroundings. The fingers skimming the stone walls dipped and twisted, and he stopped to take a closer look only to jerk away with a strangled scream. There was a _skull_ mounted in the wall!

"How chipper," Lash drawled while he tried to get his breathing back under control. "You mortals have feared death since you were aware enough as a species to understand what it was, but I fail to comprehend why you would decorated your tombs with the remains of the dead."

"Don't ask me! I wouldn't do it!" he snapped, then he glanced around to make sure no one had heard it.

She nodded and continued down the hall, and he hastily followed her. After a short while, the chain had turned to point completely to his left rather than slightly ahead, and he looked at the flat wall with disgust. "This is going to take forever, isn't it?"

"Assuming you want to remain stealthy? Possibly," she muttered. A frown appeared, and she stretched her hand forward to rest on one of the skulls set into the wall. "Harry? Come feel this."

He did so, closing his eyes to focus more of his attention on what his other senses were telling him. After a second, he heard it: a faint _thump-thump_, like the beating of a distant heart. "It's enchanted," he breathed. "This is where they're hiding the door." And if it was merely locked, he had the perfect spell for it. "_Bats'vel_."

Nothing happened, and Lash sighed. "This is not a physical lock that can be so easily opened, Harry. It needs a password."

"A password we don't have," he reminded her.

"True, but instead you have me." She vanished and slid into his skin, and he watched as his hand moved in strange patterns over and around the skull. The seconds became a minute, and just when the itching of her possession was beginning to grow unbearable, the skull slid out of sight and a portion of the wall swung inwards with a loud rumble of protest. "They will have heard that," she whispered in his ear. "Hurry inside."

His feet made a light patter as he ran inside, where tunnels identical to those he had just left continued undaunted. The chain pointed directly in front of him, and he wasted no time running down the straight hallway and ignoring the doorways that occasionally led away from his route.

A low growl echoed off the stones, and Harry skidded to a stop. A moment passed, then two, and he let out the breath he had held.

Then a muzzle emerged from the doorway right in front of him.

His heart racing, he plastered himself against the wall and forced himself to breathe as quietly as possible, something made more difficult when he saw what was coming out the side hallway. The creature was enormous, eight feet long and its shoulder level with his elbow, and when the large mouth parted to release another growl, Harry's eyes widened as he saw the mismatched teeth that filled its maw. Fangs of dogs, conical teeth from crocodiles, serrated triangles that he was pretty sure were only found in sharks; it was as if someone had grabbed whatever teeth he had been able to scrounge from the rubbish bin and thrown them in the mix. The rest of the monster was just as much of a mishmash: it's head looked vaguely like a dog's, though the hairless skin had been stretched to fit over its skull, but the left front leg that was close enough for Harry to reach out and touch if he wanted to ended in a far too human hand. A patch of skin on its back was covered by reptilian scales while a giant sea turtle shell protected its left hip joint, and the leg underneath that shell was vaguely leonine in appearance and color. The tail that finally emerged matched the head, all skin and bones, and when it whipped to the side, it smacked the stone wall with a loud crack and flopped around. It was clearly broken, but the animal paid it no mind.

"That is no Darkhound," Lash said faintly.

The amarok – for what else could this nightmare be? – turned its head toward him, and Harry had to hold back the burning bile that rose in his throat. The monstrosity had no eyes, the sockets sitting completely empty, and one of its ears had been ripped off while the other was notched and scarred. It raised its head and took several sniffs, deep enough and close enough to ruffle Harry's hair.

He had to bite down on his tongue to keep from whimpering in sheer terror.

Whatever spell Lash had cast upon him held, and after a harrowing moment the amarok turned away and padded past him down the corridor, its mismatched limbs giving it a limping gait. Too much, Harry decided as he braced himself against the wall to stop his knees from shaking; this was all far too much for him to deal with. He wasn't some super-muscled action movie hero who could handle stuff like this. He was just a nine-year-old boy from the suburbs!

The chain in his hand tugged relentlessly down the hallway, and he shook his head. Standing around was the worst thing he could do right now. He needed to find the Veela and get out of here before he or they got eaten, and _then_ he could freak out about what he was doing.

"_Lrrut'yun_." As his tongue wrapped itself around the strange word, he felt a weight press down in the middle of his head. He had never tried to keep three spells going at once, and the strain was starting to get to him. Nevertheless, this new spell was a necessity if he wanted his newly revised plan to work. He sprinted down the hallway, his footfalls no longer making any noise, and between being invisible, inaudible, and unsmellable, he could move a little faster than he had been.

The tracking spell led him deeper into the catacombs, and as he ran he noticed the tunnels were starting to look more lived-in than those he had previously explored. Torches were placed closer together, and he saw more and more thralls with blank stares walking around performing whatever errands they had been sent on. Harry was tempted, terribly so, to pull one aside and try to wake him or her up. To be trapped in a mindless state like that was just too—

"Do not even try it," Lash warned, pulling him from his thoughts as he stared at a trio of thralls standing perfectly still in a small alcove. He glanced at her, and she shook her head. "I do not need to hear your thoughts to know where they are going. The more I see of these vampires, the more similarities I find with the Black Court. It might – _might_ – be possible to free these thralls, but it would take a great deal of time, something you do not have." He opened his mouth to protest, then remembered that his silencing spell would not allow him to speak.

She seemed to understand what he was going to say, however, and inclined her head to another group of thralls not too far from him. These five, all burly men, stood apart from the others, and each wore thick leather garments and carried heavy cudgels. "In my world, those are called 'Renfields' or 'sword thralls'. Mindless, violent, and unstoppable except through death. Even if you could bring a few normal thralls back to themselves, they would immediately try to kill you. Has your plan changed from sneaking around to fighting your way into and out of this place?" He shook his head, knowing where she was going with this. "Then do not attract their attention."

Harry silently sighed and edged around the crowd of thralls walking toward him, the back of his shirt brushing against the wall. He did give the Renfields a glance as he passed them, though, and what he saw made him shudder. Their eyes… even the normal thralls had more life in their eyes than these five did. Away from the knot of activity, he ran again, more desperate than ever to get out of this place.

Thankfully, he was close to his first destination now. The chain danced as he moved, small changes in direction causing it to swing wildly, until finally it pointed at a closed door. He glanced down both ends of the hallway and jerked the door open, only to then cover his nose with his hand. The room reeked, feces and blood and rot mixing together. Hesitantly he stepped inside.

What greeted him was nearly enough to make him vomit, weep, or more likely both. Thralls covered the floor, but they were all missing limbs or heads or had simply been hacked to pieces, and only a few of them wore the same armor the Renfields had. Two amaroks had likewise fallen, the flesh of their jigsaw bodies decomposing before his eyes and adding to the stench. And there, over in the corner, he saw who he was looking for: three armored Veela, the scouts for the raid.

Harry tiptoed over to them, trying his hardest not to step in too many of the pools of blood and bile that covered the ground. He did not recognize any of the Veela thanks to the faceplates attached to their helmets, but his chain led him to the one on the left, this Veela blood-splattered but otherwise intact. "Lisette?" he whispered, allowing his veil and silence to fall apart. Slowly and tentatively he reached out and nudged the woman's boot, already consigning himself to finding her dead like the others clearly were.

She moaned.

"Lisette!" He jumped over a couple of thralls to reach her side and pulled her helmet off a little less gently than he probably should have.

Lisette's eyes fluttered for a moment before they gradually opened to stare up at him. "Harry?" she slurred. "Wha…?"

"There's no way she can keep up with us," he muttered when her eyes closed again, though thankfully she kept breathing. "Bollocks!"

That was the hope he had when he decided to look for Lisette first. The way he had pictured this going, he expected to find either that she had died while separated from the others – not something he wanted to discover, but he knew it was a possibility – or that she had hidden herself and was stealthily making her way deeper into the complex. For her to be alive but nowhere near fighting shape did not fit in his plans. "Lash, please tell me you know some kind of healing magic or something?"

A pause, and then she ground out, "No. I used to be able to heal my hosts, but even then I could not do the same for another. I can do nothing to help her recover."

He ran one hand through his hair, ignoring the gore that the motion smeared into it. Now that he had found her alive, there was no way he could just leave her here, but he couldn't bring her with him, either. His fists clenched, and the tip of his left index finger touched his ring. His breath caught as the obvious solution presented itself. But could he do it? He had never tried to take another person with him when he teleported, and he knew there was a good chance that trying it might take too much out of him and leave him unable to continue. It was why it was the final step in his plan to rescue Aimée and Margaux.

"But what other choice do I have?" he muttered to himself. Running to the door, he pulled it closed to block out the noise and raced back to Lisette. He grabbed her hands and heaved, pulling her heavy body to his chest, and pictured the settlement's courtyard. With a word, he vanished.

The Veela still gathered in the courtyard jumped when he appeared with an ear-splitting crack. Ignoring them, he yelled, "I need some help!"

"Harry?! Lisette!" Clarisse sprinted toward them, her face filled with terrified relief. "Is she…?"

"She's alive, but she needs a doctor right now," he reported, handing Lisette over to her sister. "The others didn't make it, but they were pretty deep in the Catacombs. Aimée and Margaux shouldn't be too far from where I found her."

"No! Harry, you can't go back there!" Shaking her head, Clarisse held the other Veela close to her. "I'm amazed you even found Lisette without getting caught, but you will be if you go back!"

"I'm not going to leave them there to die!" he shouted at her. He jumped backward to yet again dodge the woman's hand and called out, "_Darbas_!"

And once more he was in the room where that butchery had taken place.

He shook his head, trying to get Clarisse's fearful face out of his mind. She was just worried about him, he knew that, but he was the only one who could do it. He _had_ to return and finish this. Patting the pocket that held the chalk, he took another look at the ground and frowned; there was no way he could draw a circle in all this muck and filth, not to mention the smell was starting to get to him. He carefully stepped over the bodies and threw the door open, taking a grateful gulp of fresher air and closing the door on the carnage behind him.

A rumbling growl shook the hallway.

With a gulp of a different kind, he warily turned his head to the right and stared at the drooling mouth of the amarok standing not fifteen feet away from him, two arms like those of a bear impatiently clawing at the ground. "It can't smell me, can it?" he whispered as quietly as he possibly could.

The beast's ears flicked forward to focus on him, and Lash answered helpfully, "No, but I think it can hear you. Run."

He spun around and ran like the dogs of hell were nipping at his heels, and when the amarok roared and chased after him, he realized just how apt that comparison was. A door just a short distance from him stood open, and Harry leapt at it, planting his feet on the wooden surface and bounced off to flail down the hallway. He landed hard on his shoulder and rolled in a tumble to a stop. When Lash had forced him to start practicing that weird 'parkour' stuff, he had thought she had completely lost her mind, but now it seemed like he owed her an apology. "That was close," he muttered, then he looked up to find the amarok's body squeezing through the narrow doorway after him and groaned. "You have got to be kidding me."

Again he was running, though the small space they were in worked to his advantage this time. The advantage would be short-lived, however, as he noticed the corridor meet a wider hall in a three-way intersection. "_Lrrut'yun_," he snarled, and his last few footsteps were too soft to be heard as he ran into the new hallway and dived to the left. A second later, the amarok roared again and pounced, and its head slammed into the stone wall with a bone-rattling boom. It collapsed to the ground and didn't stand up.

There was no way no one could have heard that, and Harry looked around for somewhere to hide before anyone could spot him and repeat the tracking spell with Aimée's hair. Thankfully, what he thought was a corridor was really just a short stretch leading to an elaborately carved door, and he wasted no time in running over to it and slipping inside. The door closed behind him, leaving him in darkness relieved by only the faintest light shining down from the ceiling.

He turned and sighed, leaning against the door for support. This adventure was turning out to be more than enough for one lifetime. He opened his eyes and peered at a shape in the gloom. It looked like a stone table bearing two lumps of white cloth, both unraveling at one end, but when he squinted he saw something that made his heart fall. Those weren't loose threads; they were strands of silvery hair.

Walking toward them, he grit his teeth to hold in the righteous fury bubbling up within him. He had found the girls, but neither of them looked good. They had been changed into matching white gowns with lots of lace and ruffles, but the fabric had been stained bright red in numerous places. He gently rolled Aimée's head to the side and growled at the assortment of puncture marks in her neck and shoulders that were liberally smeared with crimson. Lisette had told him months before that Veela could not be turned into thralls, but clearly the vampires could still feed upon them without difficulty. He took a deep breath to try to calm himself, and when he did so, the smell of cold stone and mothballs filled his nose, along with a sour stench that he could only describe as disturbingly unnatural.

His eyes rose to stare at the patch of wall ahead of him. "Who's there?"

"Did your parents never teach you manners?" a pleasant voice answered from behind him. "A gentleman should always introduce himself before he asks for another's name."

Harry turned around as the white crystals in the ceiling glowed brighter. There was a man standing at the other end of the room, long unkempt hair hanging to his shoulders and dressed in funeral clothes that he doubted had been fashionable in at least a hundred years. There were other things wrong with the figure before him, as well, most noticeably the too-white skin that was stretched tightly over almost visible bones and the blood that stained his mouth and had dribbled down his chin. The vampire licked his lips, the tongue too long for any human and smearing red over his cheeks in a sick parody of a smile. "I thought we were having a good day already with the capture of a couple of young squabs to feast upon, but now I find a third delicate morsel in my chambers. This is a day worth celebrating, indeed."

"I don't think I'll make a very good snack," he said brightly. Behind his back, his hands reached out to search for the girls' hands or elbows or any other parts of their bodies he could grab on to. He needed to get out of here now!

At that point, Harry made what he would later be informed was the worst mistake he could have made in that situation. He blinked. When he opened his eyes again, the vampire was right in front of him with emaciated hands squeezing his upper arms like vises, and then the world spun and he was flying through the air. He slammed into something hard, and he gasped in pain as his ribs cracked even as a bucketful of dirt fell onto his head.

The vampire chuckled lowly, the sound dark and sickening, and the monster smirked while Harry slowly extricated himself from what he immediately realized was an upright coffin. "I am afraid I cannot allow you to take my pets away from me," he – _it_ – laughed. The master of the night pulled Margaux to an upright position and cuddled her like a teddy bear; though the girl opened her eyes, she did not react to either the predator holding her in its grasp or him staring at her. "You see, I have grand plans for these two. For centuries, we have tried to tame these pretty birds, but so far they have resisted us." It grinned evilly. "I think I have stumbled upon a solution, however. Rather than magic, I think a few years of conditioning will turn them into the docile feeding stock they are meant to be. Ecstasy when they are good"—it suddenly twisted Margaux's forearm, the bones snapping with a loud crack—"and agony when they are bad."

"I'm going to kill you," Harry hissed. He meant it with every fiber of his being.

He pulled his thorn wand from the belt loops of his jeans, and the vampire laughed and dropped Margaux negligently back to the stone table. "A stake? You truly are a proper vampire hunter. Come!" It ripped open the waistcoat and white shirt it wore to reveal its chest in all its pallid glory and spread its arms wide. "I will be generous and give you the opportunity you so desire. See if you can grant to me my eternal slumber."

After seeing that thing's speed, there was no way he wanted to get in a fistfight with it. Harry stood and raised his right hand up to eye level, then he let go of his thorn wand and pointed his fingers at the vampire. "_Nirh_!" The sleep spell flashed from him to the vampire in a jet of lavender light, and it fell to its knees with its head bent bonelessly backwards. He huffed out a laugh and painfully walked over to the girls, glaring down at the vampire when he got close enough. "Yeah, that's what you get," he snorted before putting his hand on his injured ribs. "Ow, ow. Okay, less gloating, more getting out of here."

"Oh, but our game is not yet over." He did not have a chance to widen his eyes before the vampire was upright again, and those cold hands grabbed hold of his outstretched wrist. He was thrown up in the air and spun again and again in a circle. The whirling world bent without warning, and his back met the floor and forced the air out of his lungs. The vampire, who hadn't even let go of his arm, casually lifted him as though he weighed nothing and shook its head in disappointment. "Silly wizardling. Is that the best you can do?" It let go of him, and he hung in the air just long enough to see the vampire pull its open hand over its shoulder and let fly.

The slap landing on the side of his jaw made him scream as his world turned into pain, and once more he hit the coffin. Harry fell to the ground and moaned; if his ribs weren't broken before, they definitely were now, and the way his jaw felt, he doubted it was in any better shape. His movement as he tried to push himself up could not be called a scramble so much as a lurch, and he nearly fell when his right hand slipped on a round piece of wood.

"That cannot be all you can do," the vampire laughed. "Try again! I have not had this much fun in ages!"

_I'll give you fun_, he thought as he recognized what his hand had landed on. He picked up the thorn wand and, holding it like he would an exceptionally thick pencil, leveled it at the vampire. "_Ayryel_," he slurred, and though his broken jaw would not allow him to pronounce the incantation properly, the wand burst into flame and spat a fist-sized fireball at the vampire.

The burst of fire sailed perhaps three feet before it fell to the ground.

Though the vampire had flinched back when the fire appeared, it soon relaxed as it saw that it was in no danger. Instead, it raised its hands and clapped mockingly. "Very nice. A most excellent parlor trick. Do you have another?"

Harry met its shadowed eyes, and his own watered as the smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth shifted his fractured jaw. "_Herralal_."

The still-burning wand shot from his hand like a bullet and stabbed into the vampire's bared stomach. The monster shrieked as a warm yellow glow began to shine from its abdomen, and it ripped the wand from its flesh and threw it back at him. Only Harry falling to the ground kept the wooden knife from spearing his head.

A blink, and the vampire was in front of him again. Its mouth unhinged like a snake's as it screamed, putrid breath streaming into his face, and Harry did something extraordinarily stupid. He shoved his right hand into the vampire's mouth.

"_Ayryel_."

The vampire reared back as another gout of flame entered its body, but it was too late. The second fire spell went down its throat and into its lungs, or maybe the fire from the stab wound finally spread far enough up, but either way the monster's chest ripped itself apart with a low-pitched _thump_ and the flames leapt high to cover its head. After a moment the vampire fell onto its side, and Harry stared as the skin of its face crumbled and its accusing eyes popped one at a time like juicy tomatoes to splatter hot fluid onto the floor. The bones blackened, the hair shriveled and flared, the fangs drooped and fell out of their sockets.

"…harry. Harry. Harry!"

He jerked his head away from the morbid scene and stared up uncomprehendingly at Lash. The angel sighed and waved for him to stand. "There is no chance that his death knell did not spread throughout the entire catacombs. Grab the girls and go!"

Harry nodded, and then what she was demanding clicked in his mind. Right, the girls. He had to move. Slowly he pushed himself up, careful not to stick his hand in the puddle of ash or the half skeleton laying in the middle, and with the help of the wall he finally managed to climb to his feet and scoop up his wand. With gentle steps so as not to disturb his broken ribs too badly, he made his way over to the stone table. Aimée and Margaux's hands lay close together on the table, almost as though reaching out for one another, and he wrapped his own hands around them. Trusting his will and his need to pick up the slack, he spoke the garbled incantation. "_Tlarwas_."

Seconds later, his knees hit the floor, and he let himself slump into the arms of the Veela who had caught him before he could add a fractured skull to the injuries he had picked up on this misadventure. Dimly he saw Clarisse and another woman grab hold of the girls, and he smiled as best he could.

His stare met Lash's, and the look he gave her was meaningful. _Never again. I will not be beaten down like that again._

"You had better get well soon, Harry," the angel warned, an unhealthy glint in her eyes. "For I cannot wait to put that resolve to the test."

* * *

…**Harry **_**might**_** need some therapy after all this.**

**In case you were curious, the reason Harry's focus can see through glamours but doesn't affect Lash's illusions is that it works on his **_**sight**_**, hence the various eye symbols. Lash is already in his head and messing around with his brain directly.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	9. Letters from No One

**Duner89:** Aimee and Margaux not being able to fight back was a combination of being knocked out when they were first captured and then being fed on multiple times. In the old tales, a vampire feeding sedates the victim so they can't fight back (which is something different from thralldom), and between that and the blood loss, they weren't in any state to do much of anything.

**Several people mentioned it, but just to be clear, Harry didn't lose his half-finished wand. I thought I had said that in-text, but apparently not. That line has since been added to last chapter.**

**Disclaimer:** Despite saying that the Dursleys could not possibly be less like wizards, did McGonagall show up on Privet Drive's doorstep to explain magic to Harry the way she did for the Muggleborns, especially after the first few letters were repeatedly ignored? If not, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 9  
****Letters from No One**

"You have mail on the table."

Harry blinked and looked up from his trainer in time to see Aunt Petunia walking away. That was… odd, to say the least. He finished pulling the shoe off and threw it with its sibling, and then he padded into the kitchen. Who would have sent him mail? He didn't know any humans he would really consider to be friends, letters from Aimee or other Veela were always waiting for him in his room, and he knew he didn't have any overdue books from the library since they would have mentioned it to him before he left a couple of days before.

Maybe it was an acceptance letter from one of the private secondary schools he had applied to? If so, it was horribly late; Smeltings, the school Uncle Vernon had attended, had informed Dudley of his placement there the previous month, after all. But even if it was late, Harry thought as he spotted the cream-colored envelope, he would still be going. He had convinced his uncle to apply to four for him, but two of them had written back that he had forgotten to send his primary school transcripts before the deadline passed – despite the school saying it had submitted those along with everyone else's – and the other two had ignored him entirely. As it was, he would be forced to attend Stonewall High, the local state school, and while he was sure there was nothing really _wrong_ with it, it would still be filled by the same people he had gone to school with for the last several years, none of whom had ever wanted anything to do with him and none of whom he had much interest in interacting with, either.

The letter lay face-down, and his eyebrows rose when he saw the blob of purple wax holding the flap closed. He did not remember any of the schools being quite _this_ fancy. However, he also did not recall their names starting with the letter 'H', which here was proudly circled by a lion, a snake, a badger, and a bird. Flipping the parchment over and seeing the address written in emerald-green ink, his excitement promptly vanished.

_Mr. H. Potter  
__The Smallest Bedroom  
__4 Privet Drive  
__Little Whinging  
__Surrey_

There was no stamp.

Harry tapped one corner of the envelope against his lips as his thoughts flew in a flurry. Someone was watching the house, specifically had been watching _him_. How else would they know where he slept?! More importantly, said spy or spies were probably magical. None of the Veelas' letters ever came with stamps, mostly because they did not go through the post system, and neither had this one. To have been mixed in with the rest of the mail, whoever sent it must have dropped it on top of the rest of the post for the day, but if they knew where he lived and had come by to hand it over, why not actually hand it over instead of hiding their involvement?

Unless it was a trap.

He tossed the letter to the tabletop and frantically checked his hands, only to be interrupted by Lash's laughter. Glancing up, he found her sitting peacefully at the table and drinking a steaming cup of tea that he knew for a fact had not been there before. "Acting a little paranoid, aren't you?"

"I don't know who sent it," he answered. "It could have been cursed or something."

"If so, Petunia would have been affected by it when she picked it up. Besides," the angel said, flipping her blonde hair back, "you could have just asked. There was no sign of any magic on the envelope, and any curse strong enough to strike you down before you had a chance to dissolve it would be noticeable even unopened."

It was hard to argue with that. During one of Lash's many, _many_ experiments, they had discovered that he could turn his magic corrosive, in a manner of speaking, where it would degrade a number of minor and even some not-so-minor spells so long as they were not tied down to runes or some other material anchor. She had described it as being not entirely unlike Dresden's hexes, though working against magic rather than technology. Still… "You call me paranoid, but checked the letter for any spells yourself?" he mocked.

She shrugged. "It is my job to keep you safe, and therefore my suspicion is not paranoia but competence." Taking another sip of her tea, she prodded, "Will you not open it and see what it says?"

"Fine, but if I open it and something bad happens, I reserve the right to say _'I told you so'_." Lash waved her hand for him to get on with it, and he tore into the envelope and pulled out the two sheets of parchment. Skipping the letterhead, he read aloud, "_'Dear Mr. Potter, We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of… Witchcraft… and Wizardry_'?" He blinked. "The hell is this?"

At Lash's curious hum, he continued, "_'Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl no later than 31 July. Yours sincerely, Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress'_. It's already the twenty-fourth. They sure didn't give me much time to answer, did they?"

Looking again at the ending, he nibbled his lip. _'We await your owl'_, it said. He knew the Veela kept specially bred doves to carry their letters back and forth; Aimee had made sure to show him their roost on one of his visits. Perhaps it was the same thing here, just with owls instead? Of course, considering he had neither owl nor dove with which to respond, that knowledge did him little good. He had once raised the point of taking a dove for himself so he could write back and forth with his friend, but she had refused, explaining that if he couldn't answer with pen and paper, he would have no other option but to visit in person.

Now he wished he had argued more strenuously on that point.

Then again, did he really _want_ to attend this school? Whoever had sent this letter had been very inconsiderate, after all; what if his papers had not been lost in transit to the schools he had applied to and he had already been accepted there? And assuming he had an owl with which to reply rather than including a mailing address? Sure, going to school for magic was an alluring option, no doubt about that, but this was a truly terrible first impression. Did he want to spend seven years at a school where the administration might just decide to slack off at any time, regardless of how it might inconvenience anyone else? "Hey, Lash. You mentioned before that Dresden had been in a 'master and apprentice'–type situation, and that he had a couple of students of his own later on. Were there magic schools he could have attended instead, or was that the norm?"

"Now and again, wizards would try to put together a proper school, but they never lasted long. Training an apprentice gave more time to work individually with the pupil, and considering that these students were teenagers in the midst of their angst and hormones?" Lash shook her head and smiled. "Keeping one or maybe two apprentices out of trouble was generally a full-time job, particularly if he was someone as headstrong and trouble-prone as Dresden. Or you," she added after a moment.

"Gee, thanks." He shrugged and tossed the first page onto the table. "I guess if I'm _that_ much trouble, I just won't bother going. Besides," he said with a smile at his angel, "I kind of like the one-on-one stuff we've been having."

Lash sighed. "Except we again run into the issue that I am unsure of the limits or capabilities of this world's magic. Individualized tutoring is worthless if the mentor knows little."

"I didn't expect you to miss the obvious like this," he laughed. She quirked an imperious eyebrow at him, and he flapped the remaining sheet of parchment in his hand. "Booklist enclosed." Lash vanished and reappeared behind him, her head hovering over his shoulder, and he unfolded the list.

_UNIFORM  
__1\. Three sets of plain work robes (black)  
__2\. One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear  
__3\. One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)_

"…Dragons? Are they serious?"

"I can only assume so, but the dragons of this reality must be different than those I am familiar with. Dragons are beings of incredible power in my world, and killing one is no simple task. In fact, of the rare Dragon-slayings that I can recall, only a few did not involve divine assistance to some degree or another."

"Oh."

_4\. One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings)_

_ COURSE BOOKS  
__ All students should have a copy of each of the following:  
_The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1)_ by Miranda Goshawk  
_A History of Magic_ by Bathilda Bagshot  
_Magical Theory_ by Adalbert Waffling  
_A Beginners' Guide to Transfiguration_ by Emeric Switch  
_One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_ by Phyllida Spore  
_Magical Drafts and Potions_ by Arsenius Jigger  
_Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ by Newt Scamander  
_The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection_ by Quentin Trimble_

"And there we go," Harry proudly said. "We just need to pick these up, and we should be set."

"Possibly. Possibly not." Lash shook her head at his curious frown. "This _Standard Book of Spells_ is what concerns me. I have never been a fan of trying to 'standardize' magic; with magic being extremely individualized, trying to force everyone to adopt the same mechanism only makes matters more difficult. Besides, in my experience any attempt at teaching a group always ended up catering to the slowest parties and wasting the time of those who could handle going at twice the pace. The spells in that book might very well have been dumbed down so that anyone can use them, but at the expense of speed or utility."

After a moment of thought, he offered, "But we won't know until we take a look at it, will we?"

"True. And if _Magical Theory_ and _A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration_ are decent texts, I should be able to use them to shore up any deficiencies. Or," she laughed, "at least they could be amusing. These pseudonyms are quite ridiculous."

He chuckled alongside her and looked at the rest of the list, but confusion hit at the first item. "_'Other equipment: 1 wand'_? Can you just go out and buy a focus?"

"You could," Lash admitted, "but while anyone can technically use another's foci, they never work as well as they do in their maker's hand. When you attune a focus, you are the one who determines exactly how it will work, and in doing so you burn the conceptual pathways into your mind. That gives you an advantage when wielding it that no one else would ever have."

The rest of the supplies were more understandable. A cauldron, presumably for the potions he would brew, with phials for holding the concoction when finished and scales for weighing ingredients. A telescope that was assuredly for studying astronomy. A pet, including the option of an owl he would need if he wanted to accept his placement.

"You realize, of course, that to get these books we will need to return to that 'Diagon' location."

Harry grimaced at that reminder. After the disaster that was the entire 'monster-pirates kidnapping and planning to sell him' thing the previous year, he had avoided going back to the marketplace he had found. Mostly, he had not needed to; he had not made another attempt at brewing potions, and while he had added a couple of foci to his inventory since then, all the components he required he could either buy at the Tesco in Great Whinging or barter for from the dwarves. "I'll… figure something out."

"Very well." Lash returned to her previous seat, the tea he knew was an illusion but his eyes and nose said were real still steaming. "And I suppose this means it is a good thing you were not accepted at those other schools. By commuting to and from Stonewall, you will not have to worry about anyone snooping around your belongings and finding your collection of books and tools, nor will we have to pack up your workshop and break down the wards."

He rolled his eyes and binned the envelope and letter both. Lash had a photographic memory, so when they went to Diagon – provided he could not think of some way to get the books without stepping foot in that accursed place between now and then – she could tell him what he needed. She would almost certainly add a few other books that were not on the official list, but she would have convinced him to get them anyway. This just cut out all the wheedling. "And by _'we'_, you mean _'me'_."

"I thought that much was self-evident."

* * *

Minerva looked around the suburb with no little distaste. One of the great things about magic, transfiguration especially, was that it had a way of eventually bringing out the artist in everyone; the imagination did the heavy lifting, and the wand made it so. Everything magic produced was slightly different, bearing the marks of the creator just as did the works of master craftsmen. In her numerous dealings with Muggleborns, however, she had found that far too much of the Muggle world was mass-produced, identical, impersonal. Soulless, even, as much as that made her sound to her own ears like a blood purist.

Looking out at Privet Drive, a cynical portion of her mind wondered if their diseased beliefs might not have originally been based on truth.

She shook her head and began the short walk to her destination, intentionally ignoring the cookie-cutter appearance of the houses as best she could. There were more important things to worry about, like what was going on with Harry Potter's acceptance letter. The Hogwarts Quill, which wrote out the letters and addressed the envelopes of the outgoing post, was linked to another Founders-era artefact called the Book of Names, from where it actually picked up those names and addresses and where it in turn recorded a variety of useful information. As Deputy Headmistress, it was her job to check those names to see who had received their letters, who had not, and what their responses were.

That was the cause of her current confusion. Potter's name had changed several days ago from being written in black ink to blue, a sign that he had received his letter and read it. That was normal, and shortly afterwards it was supposed to change to either green, signifying that the school had received a letter stating that he would be attending, or red, which meant he was rejecting his place. Seeing names in red ink was rare, but it did happen occasionally and justified a face-to-face meeting to determine what the problem was and how it might be fixed. But for the last week, his name had instead stayed stubbornly blue. She could understand someone taking time to weigh his decision, but this was ridiculous! Today was the deadline, and still they had yet to get an answer.

She had little consideration for divination as a whole, but right now Minerva dearly hoped this was not an omen of how the seven years James Potter's son spent at Hogwarts would go.

Approaching Number 4, she tugged uncomfortably on the plum skirt suit she had taken to wear when visiting Muggle households despite how awkward it felt and knocked on the door. A few seconds passed in silence, and she tried again, suspiciously eyeing the little round button next to the door. She was not going to push it. What was wrong with a good old-fashioned knocker, anyway, instead of stringing bells throughout the house? The door opened before she tried a third time, and a head of slicked-back blond hair poked through the gap. "Hello," the round-faced boy said slowly. "Can I help you?"

This must be the Dursleys' child, she decided, thinking back to that long day spent in feline form almost ten years previously. What was his name, again? "I certainly hope so," she answered, deciding the boy's name really was of little concern at the moment. She had to deal with the mess Potter's silence had created, after all. "Tell me, where is Harry Potter?"

The boy looked at her uncomprehendingly for a second before the light shined dimly behind his eyes. "Oh, Harry's probably in his shed near the park. It's where he spends most of his time nowadays."

In his shed? Minerva flicked a displeased glance deeper into the house. She did not know much about the boy, but she did remember that today was his birthday. Who would exile a child out of his house on his birthday?! "Do you think you could show me where that is?" she finally bit out. "I don't know this area."

The boy shrugged and waddled out from behind the door, the rest of his body just as rotund as he face would suggest. "Sure. It's not too far from here." She stepped aside to allow him to pass, a difficult task considering he was so fat that he had trouble walking out the door, and once he shut and locked the door he waved for her to follow. "Why do you want to talk to Harry, anyway?"

"He has been offered a place at the school where I teach," she finally admitted. With no way of knowing how much Potter's cousin already knew about magic, she was reluctant to reveal more details, particularly in public like this. Still, giving the most basic truth could not be so bad.

Unfortunately, the boy apparently felt that was an invitation to chat. "Oh, wicked. I'm going to Smeltings next year, and I know Harry didn't want to go to Stonewall High. He applied to a bunch of other schools, but they always seemed to lose parts of the paperwork. What's your school's name?"

"Hogwarts. It's a smaller school; most people haven't heard of it."

"Ah, all right. What kind of stuff do you teach there? Cool spy stuff?" The boy snickered. "Because I think Har—"

Minerva took another step before realizing that the boy had fallen behind and stopped talking. Turning around to look at him, she had to blink in surprise. He was just standing there, eyes staring straight ahead and mouth moving up and down slightly like a cow chewing cud. "Mr. Dursley?" she said, and when that got no response, she reached out and gave his shoulder a small squeeze, also to no avail.

Something was not right about this, and while she could not put her finger on it, she knew she had seen this kind of behavior before. As quickly as the boy had stopped, he suddenly resumed walking as though nothing had happened. "—ry would be really good at that kind of thing. He's big into cryp… crypta…" The child shook his head. "Code-breaking and stuff like that. You should see his notebooks for class! Lots of weird letters all over the margins, and I guess they mean something to him, but I can't make heads or tails of them."

"Weird letters?" she repeated slowly. "What do you mean by that?"

"Just what I said. Squiggles and crosses and circles. Don't know what they're supposed to be."

She mulled over that as they walked in silence to the park he had mentioned. _'Weird letters'_, _'squiggles and crosses and circles'_. That almost sounded like how someone who did not know what they were might describe _runes_. But this was a completely Muggle neighborhood; where would Potter have ever run across runes himself?

Again the boy stopped while she continued forward into the small stand of trees, but this time when she looked back she found him wandering away in the direction of his house. "Where are you going?" she asked archly.

"Huh?" He looked back at her, and the faintly glazed look in his eyes cleared for a moment before reasserting itself. "I think I left the door open back home."

This behavior, at least, she knew quite well. Somehow, in this tiny copse in the middle of a nonmagical neighborhood, there was a Muggle-Repelling Charm. The question now was who had set it up, and much as she did not want to believe it, she only had a single suspect. Runes, protective charms… and now she remembered why the Dursley boy's sudden halt had been so familiar. She _had_ seen it before: during and shortly after the War, in Muggles who had been held under the Imperius Curse.

The shiver that ran down her spine then had nothing to do with the sunny July day.

Her hand clenched tightly around the handle of her wand, she slipped deeper into the trees. The shed the boy had mentioned was obvious, seated in the middle of the wooded area, and while the windows were filthy and showed no light shining out, she could hear sounds coming from inside. More importantly, those sounds were words, garbled because of the walls but nonetheless in a pitch appropriate for the throat of a young boy. Schooling her face into something she hoped was fairly neutral, she brought her fist up and rapped it once against the door.

_Fitz snap BOOM_.

Minerva blinked her eyes and stared up at the treetops. Why was everything sideways— No, she was just laying on the ground, and in addtion feeling like she had been trampled by a stampeding herd of hippogriffs. A wince crossed her face as she tried to sit up, her muscles all spasming in rejection of that idea, but eventually she forced her back off the dirt and propped herself up against a conveniently located tree where she could send a baleful glare at the shed that now stood twenty feet away. She supposed she should just be glad she had not flown back at a little more of an angle, else her head might have impacted said tree.

One of the windows slid open, and a boy with a rat's nest of black hair looked out with an absolutely unimpressed expression. "What's a witch doing hanging around Privet Drive?"

And there went any doubt that he had been in contact with another witch or wizard. Shaking her head to try to clear the haze, she demanded, "Are you Harry Potter?"

"As I've been reminded a time or two"—a strange grimace swept over his face almost too fast for her to notice—"it's rude to demand someone give their name before you've introduced yourself."

Oh, if she didn't have trouble just standing up, she would turn this brat over her knee! "I am Minerva McGonagall," she snapped, "Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts." And considering his attitude, he could only be James Potter's son. She had forgotten just how arrogant and spoiled James had been when he was a first-year, but his son had clearly inherited those traits in spades.

Potter flicked his eyes to the side before nodding. "Then yes, I'm Harry. You must be here about that letter your school sent last week."

Minerva hauled herself to her feet and braced her arm against the tree when she felt herself begin to sway. "Indeed," she said in a stern voice. "You should have sent in your reply by now. Today is the deadline for you to make that decision."

"Really?" Potter drawled, one eyebrow raised. "And how exactly was I supposed to send a response to you? You neglected to leave a return address."

"By owl, of course."

The boy's eyes skimmed along the smattering of trees. "If you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of the suburbs. We don't exactly have a bunch of woodland creatures scampering around, owls included."

Oh. Well. Minerva pursed her lips, not letting her displeasure and impatience with herself show on her face. The Book of Names knew whether children were born to wizards or Muggles, had to in order to generate the two different templates, but now she realized she had never considered what that would mean for a wizard-born child raised around no one but Muggles. "Be that as it may, I am here now. I can take you to Diagon—"

"You assume I want to attend your school."

That challenge brought her up short, and she narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously. Harry Potter, not wanting to go to Hogwarts? That simply would not do. "Your name has been down for Hogwarts since you were born. The most advanced school of magic in the world. Whyever would you want to refuse?"

"You sent me a letter telling me I was accepted into your school without allowing me enough time to weigh my options, and then you blamed me for not replying in time even though you didn't give me any way of contacting you." He shook his head. "So far, I'm not all that happy with what I've seen, and it leaves me with doubts about how your staff would act were I in your care as a student."

_That_ was what had him so upset, that they had not conformed to how he thought they should have handled things?! Severus had been complaining all summer about how entitled Potter would behave, and much as she did not want to believe it, she was beginning to think his dour predictions might be right. Shaking her head, she threw that thought out of her head as best she could. Just because he acted like he ruled the roost here did not mean that he would be the same once he was surrounded by fellow wizards, though it did raise a number of other concerns. "You think your disgruntlement about the letter is reason enough to throw away your birthright?"

He opened his mouth to reply, but then he shut it and his eyes lost focus for a second before alighting back on her. "You seem inordinately invested in having me as a student at your school," he said, once again suspicious. "Why?"

And he was right, she knew. For the Boy-Who-Lived _not_ to go to Hogwarts? There was no way that would not reflect badly on the school. "That is not a conversation to have through a window," she said, glancing pointedly at the trapped door. He watched her for an extra moment or two, then shut the window. Another five, six seconds passed before the door creaked open.

Judging her legs to be stable enough now to support her weight, she carefully walked toward the shed, giving the wooden walls and door a distrusting look. Once inside the small building, she cast a curious eye around the small space. A few rough shelves decorated the walls, chisels and saws and pliers resting on them along with other tools whose purposes she could only guess at, and centered against the back was a small table where Potter sat watching her, his feet swinging back and forth and a square of cloth covering something at his side. A glint of light around his left ankle distracted her before she dismissed the brief glimpse she had of his jewelry. The vagaries of Muggle fashion, by and large, escaped her, but she was sure he would conform to a normal dress code once he had reintegrated himself in the magical world.

What truly caught her attention, however, was the floor of the shed. Around the corners where wall met plywood was a rectangle of thick silver rods joined together, half-buried so that the shape would not get in the way of the door opening an closing. A closer look at the lower walls revealed the _'weird letters'_ the Dursley boy had talked about, a string of shallowly carved symbols that wrapped around the room and branched off here and there for a short distance before either ending or, in a few cases she could see, looping back around and rejoining the main line. They were certainly runes, of that she had no doubt, but what they meant she hadn't the foggiest. She had never seen something like this before.

What she did have was a great deal of confusion and suspicion. Albus said that the blood wards he had erected over Privet Drive would keep the boy safe from any Dark individuals, but the signs of the Imperius Curse and the strange runes all over this place told a different story.

The door slammed shut behind her, and her eyes shot to meet Potter's own. She remembered Lily's eyes, the bright green of grass in the spring, but her son's were different, shadows lurking behind a paler green that was more in line with glowing phosphorus. He blinked, and as though reading her mind, the color dimmed to something a little more natural. "Well, you're inside now. I'd like an answer to my question."

Nodding, she gave him a brief overview of his own history, how You-Know-Who had terrorized the country for over a decade before going after his parents, wonderful people both – she made to stress that point, giving him a warning look that he deftly ignored – and how the Dark wizard had cut them down before turning his wand on baby Harry. How somehow, by some strange magic no one knew, the curse that had killed hundreds before him then inexplicably failed. How as a result every child in the world knew his name and his sad story.

When she was finished, a normal child would have been confused or at least a little upset, from hearing about his parents' deaths if nothing else, but Potter just kept staring at her. After a moment, he summarized, "So, the reason you want me at your school so badly is because something odd happened, no one knows what, this You-Know-Who guy keeled over, and I'm considered famous because of it. That about right?"

"Hogwarts is the preeminent school of magic in the world," she reminded him, "and your parents would have wanted you to attend and get the best education possible in the school they themselves enjoyed so much." He watched her impassively, her appeal to his love of his parents worthless, and after a moment she agreed, "And yes, someone in your position is expected to be at Hogwarts."

"Heaven forbid I don't do what's expected of me," he muttered. Shaking his head, he continued, "But that's all reasons _you_ want me to attend your school. Why do _I_ want to be a Hogwarts students?"

She reared back as though she had been slapped. "Excuse me?!"

"Let's say I don't want to go to your school, especially not after finding out that the general public thinks of me as Magical Jesus." He winced after that comment and quickly corrected himself, "Okay, bad comparison, but the underlying point stands. What makes Hogwarts so much better than going to a normal school and learning magic on my own time?"

"Do you actually think you could teach yourself magic even a fraction as well as a fully trained professor could?" she demanded.

He gave her a sly grin that she itched to hex off his face. "You'd be surprised."

Minerva took a deep breath and swallowed her immediate response. Though being talked back to by a child like this rankled, under the surface it was a conversation she had had dozens of times since Albus named her his deputy, one she knew how to handle. Pulling a button out of her coat pocket, something she kept with her for demonstrations just like this one, she tossed it in the air and waved her wand over the airborne disc.

The hooves of an extremely confused zebra hit the floor.

Potter blinked in total shock before tentatively reaching out to touch the animal, just as all eleven-year-olds would do when confronted by an animal they had only ever seen at a zoo. The zebra shied away, but after he muttered something guttural and garbled to it, it calmed enough to let him stroke its neck. "Is it real?"

"In a way. It will behave like a normal animal, complete with the instincts a natural creature would, and if you put it beside a real zebra no one could tell the difference. But if you mean can I let it go and create a herd of animals in Surrey?" She shook her head. "I'm afraid the answer is no. Transfiguration is not permanent; such a thing lies solely within the purview of alchemy, and even that cannot create life from nothing. But," she said, returning to the point of their conversation, "do you think you would be capable of learning all you needed in order to do something like this on your own?"

The boy was silent for a moment before answering, "Since there was a textbook for transfiguration on the book list, I probably could."

She kept herself from rolling her eyes at his baseless confidence, though she knew she could not blame him too much. Even with someone teaching him on the sly, there was no way he could know all the intricacies and complex theories of her chosen art. Vanishing the animal, she said, "If you think a book alone is enough to learn an entire subject, you are sorely mistaken. There are aspects of magic that can only be truly taught through demonstration and personal explanation, no matter what simple victories you have achieved on your own."

Just as she expected, his cheeks grew red at the insult to his mysterious tutor, but he clamped his mouth shut before he said anything that would give away hints to that person's identity. His teeth ground together for several moments, and then he quietly bit out, "Fine." Raising his voice to a normal volume, he continued unhappily, "All right, you've convinced me. I'll go to your school."

She raised one eyebrow at his sudden change in attitude. That was… strange. Strange and disconcerting. Still, he had agreed, and that was the thing that mattered. Once he was at school, assuming he became a Gryffindor like his parents – something she felt was less and less likely the more she listened to him – she would be able to find out the answer to this mystery. "Then let us depart. We have much to do, and not much time to do it in."

"Let me get my stuff," he sighed. Opening the door and walking out, she had to wait for a short while before he joined her, now wearing his shoes and fiddling with, to her ever-diminishing surprise, a torc bracelet with bands of alternating silver and green. Even knowing that he could not possibly be aware of the significance of those colors, she still shot it an irritated glare. His eyes caught hers as she looked away from the offending jewelry, but despite his questioning gaze she merely held out her elbow. He looked at the offered limb and hesitated before wrapping his hand around it. With a sigh, he asked, "Where are we headed?"

"Diagon Alley." And then, without giving him time to ask another question, she spun on her heel and Disapparated.

The lack of warning would serve him right for his earlier attitude.

* * *

**I know nothing about how the British secondary education system works, so the way I depicted it is probably totally wrong. Of course, I don't know how private schools works in the U.S., either; I'm a product of the public education system.**

**I'm not totally happy with McGonagall's scene, to be honest. I've always had a hard time figuring out her 'voice', partly because most of the times we see her in canon she's either in professional mode or disciplining Harry, and that problem is only exacerbated once I throw her **_**way**_** out of her depth like I did here.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	10. A Proper Introduction

**Brin:** I would have preferred to discuss this in a PM, for length if nothing else, but suffice it to say that I have a few issues with considering transfiguration to be permanent. First, that is never said to be the case in canon; as far as I am aware, J.K. has only ever mentioned it in interviews, so the details of what it can and can't do are open to me to toy around with however I want. Second, there are aspects of the background world that conflict with that assumption. Why would the Weasleys worry about buying robes secondhand if they could just transfigure their old robes into new ones? Furthermore, Molly was obviously embarrassed that the only dress robes she could find for Ron were so abhorrent, so why would she not do something to resolve that problem and give him something actually decent-looking? Third, duplicating food is no different than conjuring it, at least from a physical perspective; it is still creating matter out of nothing. Yet the owners of Honeydukes keep stock in the cellar; why would they do that if they can just duplicate the lone 'master copy' of a sweet when they run low? (And a quick aside: as someone with a background in biochemistry, trust me when I say that simple hunger is _far_ from the worst thing that could happen if food vanished from inside your body.) Fourth, the Wizarding World is shown to have an economy similar to a historic cottage industry, but in the real world that was based on production. I can't see that parallel developing when wizards would have no reason to place the same value on raw materials or basic processing. Fifth and last, and due to the aforementioned background, making wizards capable of changing matter permanently on an atomic level and then watching them squander that ability on trivialities is galling on a personal level.

So why did I change how transfiguration supposedly works? The short and mildly arrogant answer is because I wanted to.

**Rocjaw Cypher:** Dumbledore is… well, he… um… Okay, it depends on exactly how we're defining "evil". There are enough issues in the first two books, book 1 especially, that he has to be either incompetent, senile, or a plain idiot or manipulative and moderately callous for his actions to make any sense. The first set of options could work, but it's harder to make that a fun story, so instead he's the latter. That's not to say he'll be twirling his waxed mustache or laughing maniacally where no one can hear him, but the plans he has concerning Harry and Voldemort aren't exactly conducive to Harry's continued good health. In his defense, he is a definite moral utilitarian, so if one person has to suffer for a thousand people to live, that would be a morally justifiable choice. The problem is just that when you're that one, the line between "It's for the betterment of the world, dear boy" and "Mwa-ha-ha-ha!" gets very blurry indeed.

**Clearly I was right to be unsure about my portrayal of McGonagall; some of you said it was borderline bashing, even making her a "Gryffindor Snape", while others said it was dead on. That is something I find very interesting. Rather than risk starting a bunch of arguments, I'll just reveal how I always viewed McGonagall in the series so you can see where I'm coming from and why I've written her as I have. I see her as someone quick to make assumptions; in this case, she assumed Harry would act a certain way because of how his parents behaved when they were children, and when he didn't, she tried to fit the new information into her assumptions rather than reevaluate her opinion. That's not a criticism of her; we all do that. Because of her cultish devotion to Dumbledore, however (see book 1, where she trusted his words over her own eyes, and book 4, where she told Karkaroff and Maxime that Dumbledore's conclusions "should be good enough for everybody" simply because he's Albus Dumbledore), she despises the Dark, and her conclusion that Harry has been influenced by someone of a Dark persuasion and might even be Dark himself threw her off-balance. Cue the mental flip-flopping. Add in the fact that she liked James and Lily, and the implied "that's not how your parents would want you behaving" sprinkled throughout her scene start making more sense. She's also a proud woman, both of her position in Hogwarts and of the school itself, and stepping all over that pride like Harry did would obviously irritate her.**

**But to answer the complaint I saw most, McGonagall **_**is**_** petty; one just has to look at book 1 to see that. What else would you call sending four eleven-year-olds into the Forbidden Forest when there was something quick enough, strong enough, and evil enough to be slaughtering unicorns with a simple-minded man who never completed his magical education as their sole defense, all for the inexcusable crime of being out of bed after curfew? Apparating Harry without warning him of the side effects is comparatively minor, and while she probably wouldn't have done that if she had time to cool down, she is very much a Gryffindor: she wears her heart on her sleeve and acts before she thinks.**

**Disclaimer:** Did Ollivander say that brother wands were rare, even though it is highly unlikely that he was capable of making only one wand from a dragon's heart or a single unicorn's tail? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 10  
****A Proper Introduction**

The air and very fabric of space warped around them, and Harry had to reach out to a nearby wall to keep from falling over. He had thought ghosting by _himself_ was bad, but getting dragged along by McGonagall? Absolutely awful. He needed to apologize to Aimee, Margaux, and Lisette in the near future if they had been forced to suffer through that when he rescued them from Paris.

Shoving those thoughts from his head, he looked up slightly to find the self-proclaimed professor watching him with suspicious eyes, the same attitude she had had basically from the moment he let her into his shed. He knew he should have argued more strenuously against Lash about letting her see his workspace, but much as he did not want to admit it, there was no way even an angel could have predicted she would react so badly and so inexplicably to his foci and his wards. "That was quite good for your first Side-Along Apparation," the woman muttered softly, though it took him a moment to realize that it was their ghosting to which she was referring. "Most people are nauseous upon their arrival."

"No, I'm fine," he denied, crossing his arms. So she wanted to talk in circles rather than saying whatever it was she wanted to say? Two could play that game. "So is this Diagon Alley? I expected more rabbits getting pulled out of hats and women being sawed in half."

"What?" She stared at him totally nonplussed for a second before shaking her head and waving her wand at herself. The suit she was wearing melted into a robe that dragged along the street, and he wrinkled his nose at the sight. It was the same style that all the other people he had seen wearing the last and only time he went into Diagon Alley, but a closer look did not fill him with enthusiasm. He did not know what city they were in, but wherever it was, having one's clothes picking up everything on the ground could not be hygienic. "Come along, Mister Potter. We have much to do today and not a lot of time in which to do it."

Harry rolled his eyes. Maybe if she had come by earlier or made the school more accessible—

"Just go along with it," Lash said tiredly. "I am the only one who has to deal with your irritation about this, and I am already well aware of your opinions on the matter. Accept, adapt, continue on."

He sighed and nodded. That had become Lash's mantra over the past year, particularly when one of her experiments either failed or did something unexpected. And it was a good philosophy, he knew that, but wallowing in his aggravation was much more enjoyable than acknowledging that the rest of the world could not care less about what he thought of things.

And infinitely preferable to facing Diagon Alley again.

His hand strayed to the small zippered pouch hanging from his belt as he followed McGonagall out of the alcove she had ghost— Apparated to. With the various foci he had created over the last several months, he had quickly realized that carrying everything would attract a great deal more attention than he really wanted to put up with. Instead he had this pack that he had enchanted to be bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. Lash at one point jokingly referred to it as his 'Bag of Holding', and while he did not know the reference, he understood roughly what she meant. Mostly he used it to hold the various bags of metals he worked with, but he had also modified the inside with pockets to hold his foci when he did not wish to wear them; his sight anklet he kept on at all times, but the other tools came and went as the situation demanded. Right now, he only wore his anklet and his shield torc while his ghosting ring and his flame wand were out of sight but still well within reach.

The only focus not on his person was the one he had been working on when McGonagall came to call, but that would not offer him much help if this went downhill, anyway.

"This is the Leaky Cauldron," the woman said, waving her hand at the door of a grubby-looking pub situated between a bookstore and a record store. "It is charmed so Muggles cannot see it, and it is the general entry point to the Alley, either through the door or by using the Floo, a manner of transport that relies on magical fireplaces," she explained to his questioning eyebrow. "As it is illegal to hook a Muggle fireplace to the Floo network, you will instead have to come here via the Knight Bus. We will return to your home using that method when we leave."

Pushing the door open, she quickly ushered him through the darkened room, only sparing a nod to the bald bartender before they were out a back door and in a walled courtyard. This did not look at all like the marketplace he had seen before, and for a brief moment he wondered if McGonagall was actually a teacher and not a mugger with a highly off-putting sense of humor.

She pulled out her wand again and tapped a random brick in the wall. "Once you have a wand, you will be able to enter the Alley at your leisure," she told him even as the bricks began rotating and shifting, a hole appearing and growing bigger and bigger until the entire wall had folded up into an archway. A lone rubbish bin that had been pushed against the wall twitched and slid to one side, though the motion gave Harry the bizarre impression of a dog that had just woken up to find that all its people had moved elsewhere. McGonagall walked through the opening and said, "That rubbish bin will always return to the same place when the entrance closes; tap the brick sitting three up and two to the right from the handle, and the way will open. If you forget, you can always ask Tom, who owns the Cauldron and whom you should have seen tending bar, to open it for you. Did you keep your list of supplies?"

"I'm sure I can remember everything on it," he said. Well, he couldn't, but Lash had an eidetic memory; recalling that list would be child's play for her. Another concern came to mind then. "But how am I supposed to pay for anything? You didn't exactly give me time to grab my wallet."

"There will be no need for you to bring Muggle money here," McGonagall said after a minute, her lips pursing at his admittedly impudent tone. If she wanted him to be respectful, though, she should not have treated him the way she had from the instant they met. He dealt with people who disliked him all the time – and from her attitude, she apparently disliked him on sight – but he was more than willing to deal evenly with them so long as they were open about their opinions and intentions. She was not, and he had no patience for that. "Before your parents' death, they made arrangements for your education, including giving you a trust vault to cover all expenses." Turning away from him and continuing down the street, she added, "Besides, the goblins charge a hefty transaction fee for anyone wishing to exchange currency, so this way is much better."

He stopped in his tracks and glanced at her. "Vault?" he repeated dumbly. "Why would I need a vault for my trust account?"

"Where else would they store their money?" she asked, arching a brow at him.

Okay, that was enough of that. "In an account like normal people?" he shot back in the same tone McGonagall had used. "Unless you're saying it was in fashion back in the seventies for people to leave bricks of bills laying around so they could look at them?"

The witch scowled at him for a second before resuming her walk. "Unlike Muggles, we do not use material so easy to deface or fake as paper bills. Our coinage is made from gold, silver, and bronze." _'Like proper money should'_ went unsaid, but Harry heard it nonetheless.

"So far, I am not exactly impressed with what I have seen of this woman," Lash said, slipping through other people on the street the same way a ghost would.

He clicked his tongue dismissively and muttered in a voice too soft for anyone else to hear, "You and me both."

The walk to the bank passed in silence, and when they finally arrived at the bank – covered entirely in white marble and named Gringotts, if the golden letters carved above the doorway was any indication – Harry was distracted from the surroundings by the strange beings flanking the tall doors. Short and swarthy, what could only be goblins raked their eyes over the men and women coming and going through the doors. Their noses were long, as were their fingers; a wizard stumbled out of line and nearly ran into one of the door guards, and Harry had a glimpse of blackened, triangular teeth before the goblin smoothed its face out into a mask of indifference.

Another pair of goblins sketched them mocking bows as they walked into the lobby, which had been constructed of yet more marble, and McGonagall marched over to the counter. There had to be at least a hundred of the smaller beings working behind the counter, and barely had one become free before the woman was talking at him. "We need to make a withdrawal from Mister Harry Potter's safe."

At her words, several bystanders who were still waiting in line looked over at her, and then their glances shifted to Harry. From the way their eyes widened and they started chattering amongst themselves, he was suddenly appreciative of the brusque way in which she had dragged him through the Leaky Cauldron. If his name had been announced for the whole pub to hear, he might have spent the next hour just getting his hand shaken by a bunch of people he would never meet again and honestly did not particularly care about.

The goblin glanced up at her, no more differential to her imperious attitude than Harry himself would have been. "And does Mister Harry Potter have his key?"

Harry grimaced, but before he could say anything about not even knowing that he had an account there before today, McGonagall pulled a tiny golden key out of her handbag and handed it over. The goblin examined it critically, turning it over in his hands and peering closely, and just when Harry was expecting him to give it a nibble, he passed it back. "This seems to be in order. Brasslash!"

"Harry?" Lash said, putting her hand on his shoulder as if to hold him in place. He flicked his eyes toward the teacher. "Where would _she_ have gotten the key to _your_ vault?"

That… was a very good question. "Professor, why did you have that key?" he asked in what was likely the politest voice he had used with the woman all day. Lash could be paranoid at times, but while he hoped there was a perfectly innocent reason for it, his guardian angel had a right to worry about him. She also tended to be right far more often than not. "I would have expected the bank to hold it for me or something."

"No, Professor Dumbledore has been keeping track of your finances in your stead."

Yes, because that definitely made it sound like it was all aboveboard. He was sure he had read about strangers 'keeping track' of other people's money in mystery novels before; they tended to involve the phrases 'embezzlement' and 'anonymous transfers' and 'private accounts in the Caymans' getting thrown around toward the end of the story. The chances of this being innocent had just taken a nosedive. "And does this Professor Dumbledore person know where I live?" Maybe he was overreacting; no reason to assume anything—

"Professor Dumbledore is the headmaster of Hogwarts," she said, the rebuke delivered in an aghast voice as though he had just committed some terrible sacrilege. A younger goblin who had come at the teller's call huffed grumpily, and she followed the being and beckoned him to accompany her. "And yes, he knows where you live. He was the one who brought you to the Dursleys upon your parents' passing."

Lash let out a tired laugh. "See? I am not paranoid. I just know all the vileness of human nature."

"Great," he muttered. He was expecting something bad, but this was bad in a different way than he had suspected. Dumbledore knew where he lived and yet had not once made contact with him? Apparently had taken enough of an interest in him to retain access to his money but couldn't be arsed to come around and tell him about this magical world? There were only a few ways this could be interpreted, and none of them were very good. And while was not going to go so far as to immediately place the blame for giving him to an abusive family on the man – at least, not without some evidence that Dumbledore had known about it beforehand – all it would have taken was one visit to see that things were very wrong.

Of course, that might have also made it so he did not need the personal attentions of his guardian angel, but just because things turned out all right in the end did not relieve the man of responsibility for his actions.

"And why was he the one to place me with the Dursleys and keep track of my money?" he finally asked.

McGonagall stopped again and stared at him for a silent moment before shaking her head. "Professor Dumbledore is the greatest wizard in the world. He saved our country from Grindelwald, and he was the only wizard You-Know-Who ever feared. Who else would your parents choose to ensure you were safe after their deaths?"

He took a deep breath, then let it out. The more he found out about this situation, the less he liked it. Following her and Brasslash into a rickety cart sitting upon a set of rail, he looked around for any signs of a seatbelt before simply grabbing a bar bolted onto the front. The cart rolled forward slowly before the rails fell away in a steep drop. Harry was a fan of roller coasters, at least the few he had ridden when a carnival came to Great Whinging, but this was pushing it a little. With every turn and dip, the cart would swing wildly, straining against the wheels holding it onto the rails and threatening to hurl them all out into the stygian depths, and despite making periodic ascents, they never seemed to slow down, though they certainly accelerated with every drop.

Finally, they started losing speed, and the cart came to a bone-rattling halt in front of what looked like a cave entrance. There was a door set in the stone, and Brasslash was quick to take the key from McGonagall and unlock it. The heavy metal circle swung outward, and Harry stepped closer to take a look, snagging the key back from the goblin before it could be handed over to the woman. Now if he could just peer through all the smoke billowing out—

Torches inside the vault burst into life, and Harry stared, his eyes growing wide. Gold coins sat in stacks stretching toward the ceiling, silver gleaming next to them and in still more piles further away. Surrounding the metal mountains was a veritable sea of bronze. Only a few patches of floor were visible, and he walked over to the one just inside the door and reached out for a couple of coins.

"These are real," Lash affirmed as he tossed a piece of gold up and down in his hands. "I know the weight of gold and silver coins; the Romans used currency much like this. Congratulations, you are now rich beyond your wildest imaginings."

"Is this… all from my parents?" he breathed.

"No. Your parents were comfortable, but they didn't have this much," McGonagall said in a strangled voice. He looked over to find her staring at the contents of his vault, and her face showed her to be just as awestruck as he was. "Their house was claimed by the Ministry as a national landmark, so I can only guess that much of this is the money the Ministry paid for the house and the land it's on. There was also a bounty on You-Know-Who's head, and you are the one who defeated him. That would mean that money was yours, too."

She shook her head and visibly regained control of herself. "Obviously, this should more than last you for the rest of your time at Hogwarts. Just fill a bag with some money so we can continue on."

McGonagall explained the strange denominations to him on the ride back to the surface, though she was much less enthused when he questioned why in the world anyone would make a sickle worth a seventeenth of a galleon or a knut one-twenty-ninth of a sickle rather than using something sensible like a decimal system. Leaving the bank, their first stop was at the bookstore, whose name – Flourish and Blotts – proved that these people's strange sense of humor was not limited to authors' pseudonyms. Lash practically started salivating at the books around them, and while he personally preferred the practical lessons she had given him to theory, he could not fault her for her excitement. "You remember the list?"

"Of course."

"I'm sorry, did you say something?" McGonagall asked.

"No, just talking to myself," he quickly assured her. Since the woman had stationed herself at the door, Harry waded into the ocean of knowledge being offered to him and started swimming around in it.

The books were arranged according to subject, but instead of immediately seeking out the books on his list – which Lash put up in his field of vision and helpfully made transparent unless he nearly crossed his eyes – he instead started wandering the store. Books of all kinds were pressed together, some leather-bound monsters with titles in gold filigree on their spines next to flimsy paperbacks with only the vaguest of names, and in one box near the floor were a number of tiny diaries with locks on the front that would easily fit in his palm. Books about a wide variety of ancient scripts shared shelves to travel guides, and only a foot away from _The Dark Forces_ book he needed was another text titled _Curses and Counter-curses_, the contents of which were both ludicrous and incredible. Maybe it was a good thing he had mucked about with the Dursleys' minds, after all; if Dudley still treated him as he once had, Harry didn't know if he would have been able to resist the temptation not to try some of these out.

The basket he had grabbed to carry all his school books was full to overflowing by the time he lugged it to the counter, and then McGonagall tossed another slim volume in. "What's that?" he panted, straining to pick up the heavy basket and nearly falling over when she waved a wand over it and abruptly made it weigh nothing.

Giving him a tight smile, she answered, "_The Essential Thirty_. It's a book I recommend all Muggleborn and -raised students buy. It describes some of the most basic and useful spells for general life: creating and snuffing out lights, unlocking doors, summoning objects…" She trailed off when she spotted the book about curses he had just placed on the counter and pressed her lips tight together. "Utility spells, for the most part. Things all wizards will need to learn at one point or another."

"Thank you." She waved him off, her displeased expression not softening an iota, and he rolled his eyes as he fished out the sixteen required golden galleons. "How much is this in normal money?"

"Galleons are 'normal money'," she said sternly, "and they are the common currency across the entire European continent. However, if you meant to ask how much it is in _Muggle_ money, I believe the latest exchange rate was fifty pounds sterling per galleon."

"Fifty?" he repeated. She nodded, and he glanced over at his stack of books with new respect before thinking out loud, "I wonder how much gold is in a galleon?" He didn't know the exchange rate of gold to the pound, but he was sure that he or Uncle Vernon could find out, and since Lash had made sure his uncle would ignore the oddity of those kinds of questions…

"I'm not sure, but it doesn't really matter." He shot her an incredulous look, and she sniffed disparagingly. "Gringotts charms all their coins so that any Muggle who picks one up will immediately assume it is fake. We can't permit risking exposing our world to the Muggles. They also make the coins indestructible so _unscrupulous_ individuals can't try to game the economy by selling the raw metal."

He turned back to his bags with a grumble. So much for that get-rich-quick scheme.

The rest of the afternoon passed rather uneventfully: Madam Malkin's for the robes he would be required to wear, though he had been too uncomfortable to ask whether wizards wore anything but underclothes below those billowy outfits as he suspected from McGonagall's earlier transfiguration; the apothecary, which was fascinating in more ways than one and made him glad he had picked up a few books about potion theory at Lash's request; a stationary store for sheets of parchment, bottles of ink, and a collection of feather quills. McGonagall ignored his protests when he told her that he had never used an actual quill to write with and couldn't he just use pens like a regular person, and in hindsight, that continued implication that wizards were not 'normal' was probably the real reason she denied his request.

It was a good thing that he had someone in his head who could teach him how to use these primitive implements and money to spare for more supplies after he inevitably used up all he bought today practicing his handwriting.

Their last stop was the one that had most intrigued him. A narrow shop situated at the end of the Alley near the Leaky Cauldron, faded gold letters revealed the name of their destination. "_'Ollivanders: Maker of Fine Wands since 382 B.C.'_," Harry read aloud. Another glance at the outside of the shop and the dusty windows, and he added, "Is there somewhere else we could get a wand? Maybe somewhere less… dodgy?"

"Ollivanders is the finest wand shop in Britain," McGonagall said, and in the same adamant tone she had when she had proclaimed that Madam Malkin's was the only place in Britain to buy quality robes, Pippin's Apothecary stood above any others he might visit, and Dumbledore was the greatest wizard of all time. By this point, he was wondering if she might not have grown up in the Alley and therefore refused to consider that anywhere else was as good as her childhood home. She pulled the door open and stared pointedly at him, and forcing his shoulders to relax, he trudged inside.

The inside of the store was no better than the outside. A single chair, delicate enough that he wondered if it might be a sculpture rather than a real piece of furniture, was shoved in the corner, and behind the counter were shelves filled with narrow boxes and covered by a thin layer of dust. Their footsteps echoed strangely, as if they were in a cavern rather than a building, and to add to the uncomfortable atmosphere, a faint keening noise, high-pitched enough that it was almost beyond hearing, filled Harry's ears.

"Good afternoon."

The soft voice came from deep inside the building, but the man it belonged to rustled some boxes and then came into sight. McGonagall nodded to him and said something, but Harry was not paying attention. He was otherwise distracted.

Because that was no man standing there.

His vision split and twisted as, for the first time since he tested it, his anklet activated. The white-haired man standing before them faded to the point of being transparent, giving Harry an unimpeded view of just what this Ollivander really was. The creature was just the tiniest bit taller than he was, but it was so thin it was nearly skeletal and its skin was a jaundiced yellow. Its fingers were long, stretched, and a second look revealed that it was an extra joint that made them so disturbing. Its nose looked like it had been hacked off, leaving just a hole in its face. When the image of the man smiled softly at McGonagall, the thing opened its mouth wide in a silent cackle, showing off its yellow, crooked teeth. Turning to him, it caught his gaze with its wide eyes, the irises a polished silver and the pupils tiny pinpricks of black—

"Mister Potter?"

He jerked his head at McGonagall in fright, and the professor took a cautious step back before she realized what she was doing. Turning his eyes back to this Ollivander creature, he took several shallow breaths in a futile attempt to force his heart to slow from its frantic, terrified pace. He finally managed to calm down enough to stammer, "Wh-Wh-What?"

"All I said was that it was nice to make your acquaintance." Thankfully, his anklet's ability to break illusions was limited to sight; he did not want to hear what the Ollivander's actual voice sounded like. "Your eyes are similar to your mother's." McGonagall quietly scoffed, so softly that Harry was not sure she even heard herself, and the Ollivander shot a quelling glance at her. "Oh, yes. Different but similar. I remember her quite well. Her wand was excellent for charm work: ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Very delicate magic, oh yes.

"Your father, on the other hand, liked a bit more power behind his spells. Eleven inches exactly; mahogany, but still somewhat pliable. It was no surprise to hear that he had a bent for transfiguration, not when a wand like that chose him."

The Ollivander stepped closer and reached out to touch his face, and Harry immediately skittered back a few steps. His heart pounded painful in his chest. His breath became ragged. The creature's impish face was replaced by beige fur for just an instant, the smell of the sea filled his nose, and his hand swung toward his belt pouch as though to whip out his flame wand and set the entire building ablaze. It slowly pulled its hand away, and whereas the thing sneered nastily at him, the illusion of the old man lightly frowned.

"Harry, calm down. You are in no danger," Lash murmured gently. Her fingers raked through his hair and stroked along the sides of his neck, and for a moment he could have sworn that she was using more than two hands. "This is not a pirate. He is no threat to you. Nothing he can do can harm you. You are safe. Calm down."

After several tense seconds, he let himself relax into her touch. The last time he had encountered a creature dressing up as a human, it had gone… badly, and facing a living corpse a couple of months later had not helped matters. He had thought he was over his fears – he had survived both those encounters, after all, which was more than could be said about the slavers or the vampire, and the goblins had not triggered such a reaction – but apparently some of those wounds had not quite fully healed.

"Mister Potter, that is no way to behave…"

He tuned the witch out and stared distrustfully into the Ollivander's inhuman eyes. "Let's just get this over with."

"Yes. Yes, I suppose that might be for the best." The creature turned away and slunk into the back of the store to rummage among the quiet stacks. "Your right arm is your wand arm, yes?"

"That's correct."

After nearly a minute, the Ollivander returned to the front of the store, half a dozen boxes in its arms. "Normally, I like to have a little fun with the young wizards and witches who come into my store for their first wand. A tape measure that measures a variety of, quite frankly, irrelevant ratios." It touched said measure, and at the brush of its sallow skin the tool twitched. "Then I'll try wands that I can feel are the wrong fit. Most of the time, there will be no reaction, but occasionally a particularly bad match will cause quite a show. I let the suspense build, make the children begin to doubt that they will ever find a wand just for them. And then…" It pulled the lids off the boxes it had brought. "And then I give them the few I feel would fit best. Oh, the looks of joy and relief on their faces! I am an old man, and no one can blame me for a little pageantry at so momentous an occasion.

"But you?" The Ollivander pulled out a wand and held it out to Harry, the carved grip facing him. "I get the feeling that you would not be amenable to such a game. Am I right?"

"You are." Steeling himself, Harry reached out and all but snatched the wand out of the imp's hand. As soon as his fingers rested on the wand, he felt a warmth running up his hand and into his arm, and several fat, red sparks puffed out of the wand and lazily orbited the tip. The heat lingered for a long moment before finally receding. "I take it that means it's a good match?"

The creature gave him a glance, its expression filled with some emotion Harry could not interpret. "Quite. Eleven inches of holly with a single phoenix feather as a core. Supple, but still strong. A rare combination of wood and core all on its own, and with its history, it is no surprise that it chose you."

"Its history?" he could not help but ask.

"Yes." Again the illusion of the man smiled, and again the creature cackled eerily. "When the phoenix who gave the feather in that wand made its donation, it actually pulled out two feathers. The other feather I also used to create a second wand, a brother to yours: thirteen-and-a-half inches of yew. Unyielding. Tenacious. Powerful. And the wielder of that wand? He went on to seek a grand destiny, to accomplish great and extraordinary deeds." The Ollivander gnashed its teeth. "And terrible deeds."

Harry nibbled his lips and prodded, "And this history is relevant to me because?"

"Because one of those deeds," the Ollivander said, pointing an ugly finger at his head, "gave you that scar."

McGonagall, who had been so silent for the last few minutes that Harry had almost forgotten she was still there, gasped. He, on the other hand, just rolled his new wand between his fingers. "So my wand is connected to You-Know-Who?" Though, to be honest, he still did _not_ know who, but no one seemed willing to answer that particular question.

"Your wand is tied to the wand of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, yes, just as you are tied to him. But do not take that as a condemnation," the Ollivander immediately added. "Wands do not care about good or evil. All that this wand choosing you means is that you, too, are destined to change the world as we know it. Whether that be for good or ill is up to you."

Giving the creature a nod of comprehension, he fished out the seven galleons it demanded and left the shop as fast as was feasible.

* * *

It took until early afternoon of the next day for Lash's patience to finally fail. "Well, what are you still waiting for? Whip it out and let me take a better look at it."

Harry looked up from the box McGonagall had given him after his flight from the store and sent her a sly look. For the last year and a half, she had delighted in hurling off-color jokes at him just to see him squirm, but comparatively, that one was extremely weak. Now was the opportunity he had been looking for for months, the chance to turn her jokes against her. Swallowing faintly, he asked in a light voice, "_'Whip it out_'? That's it? I was expecting a crack about how you couldn't wait to check out my long, hard rod or something."

Lash stared silently at him for just a moment before she warned, "Harry, think very carefully before you answer. Do you truly wish me to ravish your virgin ears with all the innuendo that could possibly apply to this situation?"

"Er…" A tiny smirk appeared, and then the tip of her tongue darted out to glide slowly over her red lips. His eyes fixated on the trail of moisture left behind, his cheeks burned, and he squeaked, "L-L-Let's just examine the wand."

"Thought so."

Setting the wand on the rough plywood floor of his shed, he was actually grateful when Lash vanished and filled his skin; at her command, his blush faded away as though it had never been. He would have to get her to teach him how to do that one of these days. She stretched his hand over the wand and just held it there for over a minute, and when she pulled away, a frown had found its way on his face. "Check behind me. This makes little sense."

Was she really confused, or had she just phrased it that way because she wanted to test his sensory abilities? When testing the differences between his magic and that of her old world, the chances were more or less fifty-fifty, and with her ability to make herself look and sound however she wanted, her doubtful voice was no help. He mentally shrugged and cradled the wand in his hands, ignoring the faint warmth that spread through his fingers as he closed his eyes to listen. He was not as good with his magical senses as she was – nor would he likely ever be, all things considered – and so it took him several minutes to find what Lash had been talking about.

"That's… Huh." No, she was legitimately confused, as was he. When he listened to magic, he could tell how strong it was from the volume, and the actual sounds told him what the spell was. This new wand, however, was weird; he could hear the sounds just fine, but interpreting them was out of the question. The magic was far too muddled and distorted, and the constantly changing pitch of the wand's song didn't help matters. "I have no clue."

"Nor do I," Lash muttered. "Wait. You hear a change in pitch?"

He blinked. "Yes. Why? Does that mean something to you?"

"Hearing another individual's assessment is always beneficial," she said, a victorious smile growing on her face, "and in this case, it tells me a great deal."

"Well? Don't keep me in suspense."

A roll of her eyes, and then Lash prompted, "How do the sounds of your other foci contrast with this one?"

"The sounds are clear, but most of them are quieter." She nodded encouragingly, and after a moment before what she wanted became painfully obvious. "And they're all monotone."

"Correct." Holding up one finger, she asked, "Now, what have I always taught you are the two things magic needs to be manifested? And what do you do to make your foci?"

Those were simple enough. "Intent and emotion. To make a focus, you carve runes into it, and then you attune it."

"Which is?"

"Putting your intent for the spell into the…" Harry stared at her and then turned his eyes to the wand in his hands. "You think this is designed to store _emotion_?"

"It would explain much, would it not?" Lash asked. "The transfiguration textbook you purchased spends a great deal of time on the importance of incantations and visualization, which is nothing more than intent, along with gestures of various kinds, but nowhere does it mention imbuing your spell with emotion."

He would have to take her word on that score; he had literally flipped through that book, and while that was enough for Lash to remember it and be able to read it at her leisure, he did not remember a word of the text. "What about the magical theory book?"

Lash closed her eyes and hummed for a long moment before she opened them again. "No, it says nothing about emotion, either. That is a conscious act, so the only reasons they would neglect to discuss it are that the authors of both those books do not want anyone to be able to learn magic from them alone or that using one of these wands makes it a moot point.

"Perhaps it is also the reason people in this world wait so long before teaching children magic," she continued thoughtfully. "You were capable of forming spells when you were but nine years old, and likely even younger than that. If these wands are meant to store emotional energy, however, delaying proper education until the age of eleven would mean that the prime school years would coincide with the tumultuous hormone storms of adolescence. One could hardly find a better time for such a harvest."

That made sense, but the more Harry thought about it, the more he realized it also opened the door to a terrible possibility. "Wait. You always describe magic as the intent being the actual effect while emotion is the power behind it. The bullet and trigger analogy." She nodded. "Then what you're saying is that this is, essentially, a self-firing gun?"

They both looked again at the wand.

"Because if that's the case, I'm not sure this thing's safe."

"When you phrase it that way, nor am I," Lash slowly said. "Assuming we are correct, it seems like it would be all to easy for it to activate with the slightest intent. Even a passing folly could potentially be enough to trigger a reaction."

"How would you even attune it?" he further wondered, lifting the wand up and giving it a couple of playful tosses. "Just focus on one emotion, or would you have to pour all of them into it?" With a shrug, he set it back inside the box. "Though I suppose it working on emotion might explain why it's always warm when I touch it."

"I suppose it—" Lash cut herself off and stared at him with wide eyes. "No, I do not think so. Harry, use one of your other foci. Any of them, just do it quickly."

Growing worried at her obvious fear, he grabbed his torc and slipped it around his wrist. "_Vahan_." In front of him appeared a large circle of translucent blue, the wall of the shed on the other side stretching as though he had just transported a segment of the sea to and was staring through it. His shield was still a bit of work in progress, admittedly; rather than stopping projectiles cold, it expanded the millimeter of space its width affected and used that room to gently redirect them in a direction that was not toward him, but sadly he had no way of predicting where they would come out. The spell looked the same as it had the last time he cast it, but immediately he noticed a discomforting difference. "Lash, why does it itch?!"

"Because I know what spell is on this wand." The angel shook her head angrily. "I am so sorry, Harry; I should have recognized this sooner. In the eleventh century in my world, a witch devised a method of enchanting foci so they would automatically attune themselves. All they needed was to be on her person for a few months. Unfortunately, the spell she used had a major side-effect: the process of attuning changed the wielder as well as the focus, and without her consciously guiding the process, her focus optimized the connection by also attuning _her_ to _it_. It eventually left her unable to use her other foci at anything close to their previous efficiency because every time she would try to reattune them, that focus would undo the changes she had just wrought on herself."

"What happened?" he breathed.

Lash met his eyes and shook her head. "In the end, she had to destroy her newest focus and then reattune the rest. Two years of research and three spent repairing her tools, wasted."

"So we need to destroy this now, before it damages my ability to use my other foci."

The wand was in his hands in an instant, and he was already moving to snap the wooden rod when Lash's hands came to rest on top of his. "Let us not be too hasty," she counseled. "For this spell to be on the wand already, it is only sensible to assume that it was on all the wands in that shop. If it is that common, Ollivander likely knows more about it than I do. You should return to Diagon Alley and speak with him before making any permanent decisions."

A moment to weigh her words, and he gave her an unhappy nod. "All right. We'll do it your way. Let's go see the imp." He let out a mirthless laugh. "Because this is exactly how I wanted to spend my Thursday."

* * *

**Ugh, this chapter was like pulling teeth! You probably shouldn't expect Harry and McGonagall's relationship to improve, at least not in the short term. Harry's little flashback and fit of phobia only complicated matters further. And yes, I will eventually explain what Ollivander is. Later. Much later.**

**For anyone who has not read one of my other stories, I do not give J.K.'s statement that a galleon is worth five pounds much credibility. She's said before that she's bad at math, and it clearly shows. Normally I go with an exchange rate of one galleon to 25 pounds (50 dollars), but I'm changing things up a little here.**

**Oh, and next chapter will most likely be out in three weeks. I'll be moving to my first audition rotation in two, so writing time will be kind of… zilch.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	11. The Hogwarts Express

**OldHermitBen:** We'll just have to disagree on Dumbledore, I'm afraid. While he may claim to care 'too much' about Harry, his actions say something far, far different. I don't – I _can't_ – believe his claims in the face of the conflicting evidence. Fictional characters are perfectly capable of lying.

**Eberhardt:** Dumbledore wasn't stealing money from Harry's vault. It's just that even if it's innocent, keeping access to a minor's inheritance – especially when the kid doesn't know about it – but having no contact for so long is going to look suspicious, and this Harry is worldly enough to know it. Be honest; if it weren't Dumbledore but some unknown character who had unrestricted and unmonitored access to Harry's vault for ten years, wouldn't you wonder if some funny business had gone on?

**First Dresden disclaimer I've had in a while. I don't know if that's a statement of my knowledge of the two series or if it's more indicative of Rowling and Butcher's respective skill at creating a setting.**

**Disclaimer:** Was the White Council ever mentioned to have a cartography group whose job was to map the Ways and track the changes in the connection between Earth and the Nevernever (especially since Margaret proved how useful having that kind of knowledge could be and was rather famous for it)? If not, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 11  
****The Hogwarts Express**

Harry carefully pushed the door open, his eyes looking out for any sign of the Ollivander as he slipped into the imp's shop. He kept his breathing steady and his hands slowly clenching and releasing. He had to stay calm. He had to not freak out when the creature made its appearance. He had to—

"Mister Potter?"

Whirling around at the voice, his hand whipped down to his waist and back up again. When it came up, his flame wand was clutched tightly in his grasp, the point of the knife-like focus pointed at the imp where it sat in the same spindly little chair he had noticed the first time he was here. Taking a deep breath, he let that arm fall, as well as his left hand that he had instinctively brought up in order to call forth a shield between him and anyone attacking him. A year spent training under Lash's watchful eye was paying off, even though the enemies she could conjure up for him to spar with were only in his head. "Don't do that."

The Ollivander sneered at him while the glamour of the old man it hid itself behind pursed his lips. "My apologies," it said in the least sincere voice Harry thought he had ever heard as it hopped out of the chair. "You simply surprised me. After the way you… reacted yesterday, I did not think I would ever see you enter my store again."

"I didn't want to," he replied, ignoring the Ollivander's own diplomatic choice of words. He didn't like this place, he didn't like the imp that owned it, and the faster he could get out of here and back home, the better for everyone involved. And if his resulting bluntness came across as rudeness? Well, that was just something they would both have to deal with. "But there's a problem, and I was told that you might have a way to fix it."

The creature looked at him and repeated, "A problem." At his nod, it cocked its head, the bulging eyes glowing for a brief moment with a silvery-white light. For the first time in the last two days, the imp wore a normal, human expression: a small frown of confusion. "Show me your wand."

With a slow nod, he transferred his flame wand into his left hand and reached into the bottomless pouch hanging from his belt. A few seconds were spent feeling around inside for the wand, his other foci bumping into his searching hand as though thinking he was looking for them, but finally he pulled the thin stick out and shoved it into the imp's waiting fingers.

"Hmm…" The Ollivander turned the wand around and around, peering intently at the grip, the handle, even the tip as though it could stare down the length of the shaft. "I can't see any problem with this wand, Mister Potter. It should work just as well now as it did when it left with you yesterday."

"The issue isn't with the wand itself. It's with how it's attuning itself to me."

"Attuning…?" Blinking rapidly, the effect far subdued in its illusionary self, the Ollivander shook its head. "I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."

Harry took a calming breath. Right, just because certain terminology was common in Lash's world and he had therefore adopted it did not mean anyone else would know what he was talking about. "Whatever you call the wand binding itself to a wizard. That's the problem. It's—"

"You can feel your wand binding to you?" the Ollivander interrupted. Holding the holly twig out for Harry to take, the imp continued, "That's interesting. Very interesting. The number of wizards who are sensitive to such subtle processes is small, and at such a young age…" The creature nodded. "I stand by what I told you the last time we spoke. You truly are destined for great things. Don't worry about the binding; it feels strange, I'm sure, but it's totally harmless."

He snatched the wand back from its maker and did his best not to react to the gentle warmth that spread throughout his hand. "That's not the problem. The problem is that this wand attuning to me is interfering with my other foci."

"Your other… What?"

"My foci," Harry repeated, trying not to lose his temper. Unfortunately, this conversation was straining his patience. "The tools I've already created to enhance my spells."

The Ollivander raised its hand for silence and peered intently at him. "Enhance your spells. You mean artefacts that are each meant for one particular spell." He nodded, glad to finally have that point across, and the imp shook its head in either surprise or amusement. "Designing secondary foci at eleven, who ever would have guessed it? You don't even know what an achievement that is, do you? A child, successfully recreating one of the most complex applications of enchanting from first principles, entirely by accident. Incredible."

By now he was actually starting to get a little uncomfortable, though whether it was from the Ollivander's undeserved praise or the creature's cackling, he did not know. "Glad you're impressed. That doesn't solve my problem. How do I stop this thing's auto-attuning?" he asked, waving the wand around for emphasis.

"Oh, you can't."

"What?" he asked in a flat voice.

"There is a reason wizards no longer rely on secondary foci, dear boy," the Ollivander said in a patronizing tone. "Primary foci, such as the wands my family has created for over two millennia, can cast any spell you can imagine whereas you would need a different secondary focus for each task you want to overcome. Simply put, a proper wand is inherently superior to secondary foci. That is not to say that some are not still used occasionally – I remember, back when I was a young lad, a girl who loved to wear secondary foci as jewelry and pass herself off as someone who had mastered wandless magic, and certain occupations do have specific foci for delicate tasks – but for the general public and especially someone like you, who has not even begun his true magical education?" It shook its head. "No, you should stick with this wand. It will serve you much better, I guarantee it."

Ignoring the revelation that there was a whole family of these things – one of which Harry would put money on had been named Rumpelstiltskin – he retorted, "I'd rather rely on something I know I can trust."

"Then we are at an impasse." The imp spread its arms wide and tried to speak in a gentle voice. "The binding cannot be stopped. Truly, you would be better served by just accepting it. I know this is all new and scary to you, but millions of other young wizards have stood where you stand now, and they all have been fine. Besides, would you not prefer to use a focus made by a master of his craft rather than rely on those first efforts of your own?"

Harry had already tuned the wandmaker out. There _was_ a way to stop the wand attuning to him, and if forced to choose between the Ollivander's word or Lash's knowledge, which way he would go should be obvious. He shoved his flame wand through a couple of belt loops in his jeans and then, taking one end of his store-bought wand in each hand, he put his thumbs in the middle of the shaft and pushed.

"What are you doing?!" the Ollivander shrieked. Its hands lunged out as though to rip the wand out of Harry's grasp, and only his quick step back kept the creature from grabbing him. Taking a deep breath, the Ollivander pasted a rictus of a smile on its face and in a soft voice said, "Mister Potter, if you don't have a wand, you won't be able to go to Hogwarts and learn magic. You'll be left with just the few things you've figured out for yourself. Surely you don't want to limit yourself without ever exploring just what you can really do, do you?"

"I know he is unaware that I am here," Lash remarked idly, "but I still cannot help but feel insulted."

Lash's comment made his lips twitch the slightest amount, and from the way the Ollivander's eyes widened, he could only assume the imp had misinterpreted his smothered amusement. "I know what my foci can do and how they'll behave," he said, returning to the conversation at hand. "The same cannot be said for this wand. It is unstable, unpredictable, and if I have to break it to make sure I can still use my _good_ foci, so be it. I'll be glad to see it gone."

All right, so maybe the Ollivander's disparagement of the tools he had spent so much time and effort creating had pricked his pride a little more than he wanted to admit to.

A tad more stress was added to the stick of holly, and the Ollivander immediately raised its hands in front of its face. "Wait! Wait." The wandmaker sighed faintly when he loosened the pressure on the wand. "If you are that adamant about this, I suppose we can come to some kind of compromise. The…" With a lick of its lips, the imp tried again. "The most valuable part of the wand is the core; that is what lets you tap into and utilize your magic. The spells that bind the wand to you, however? Those are on the wood. If you'll let me work on it for a couple of hours, on the other hand," it offered, stretching its long fingers out in silent entreaty to give it the wand, "I can combine that phoenix feather with a holly blank that I have not yet charmed. That way you won't have to give up your secondary foci but will still have a decent wand at your side."

"If you could do that, why didn't you offer it in the first place?" Harry demanded, his suspicions skyrocketing. The Ollivander had changed its tune, become almost obsequious, much too quickly for him to trust. Something was fishy here. He opened his mouth to say more, but a tanned arm slipped over his left shoulder and across his chest, and Lash pulled him backward and pressed him against herself. A faint blush tinged his cheeps pink as he belatedly realized just what that meant those two lumps pushed up against the back and sides of his neck were.

The imp narrowed its own eyes, the washed-out irises sliding over him as though trying to puzzle him out, before it answered. "I did not mention it because it is shoddy craftsmanship and will cause you a number of problems. If I do this, you will not experience any difficulty using your wand for working magic this year, nor really even the next; my wands need anywhere from a year to eighteen months to fully mature, depending on how well the wand's temperament matches the wizard's and how much magic they work together. But during your third and fourth year, you will start noticing your abilities with your magic falling behind your peers', and fifth year and up? You will have a great deal of trouble getting spells of that complexity to work, and even the upper-level subjects that claim to be wandless still require some charms. You will be crippling yourself, all for the sake of your ego. Do you really want that? Do you think your parents would want that for you?"

"Seriously, what is it with you wizards bringing what my parents might or might not have wanted into everything?" he grumbled. A solid step forward broke Lash's illusionary grip on him. "They've been dead for ten years, and even then, I never knew them. Their possible opinions on this situation are utterly irrelevant. And besides," he added with a single humorless laugh, "I am perfectly capable of attuning my own foci, and doing it where it doesn't bollix up everything else in the process."

Though the fact that this wand stored emotion rather than intent would make the process interesting, to say the least.

The Ollivander wiggled its oddly jointed fingers impatiently, and Harry was halfway through the motion of handing the wand over when a thought struck him. He still did not understand the reason behind the creature's sudden change in attitude. Pulling back slightly, he asked, "When you saw me about to break the wand, you panicked, and it was only after that happened that you offered to make me a non-attuned wand. What's with the sudden change in heart?"

A snarl appeared on the Ollivander's and was covered by the illusion's put-upon sigh. It took several seconds for the creature to decide what it wanted to say, but finally it explained, "For any member of my family who works with wands, we know instantly when one of our wands is broken. It is… distressing, and as I was the one who made that particular wand, feeling it break would be… uncomfortable."

_Somehow, I think there's more to this than it just being 'uncomfortable'_, Harry decided. Another moment of thought passed before he finally handed the wand over.

"Not to mention," the imp added once the stick was safely in its grasp, "I have dedicated my life and my magical talents to creating wands. Seeing them destroyed in a fit of childish petulance?" Its sneer was firmly back in place. "You don't understand how personally and professional offensive that is."

"You don't like it when someone denigrates your achievements and efforts because they see no value in them?" he asked in a tight voice, his flame wand back in his hand. "No, I understand that more than you think." Letting the point of his true wand fall to point at the ground, he continued, "And since you're offended, you're probably going to demand some exorbitant fee for this, aren't you?"

"Indeed I am, though not in the way you're thinking." The Ollivander turned away and began walking through the shelves. "Come back to pick your wand up at four, and then I never want you to darken my doorstep again unless it's to bring me an apology."

"Harry," Lash sighed, her head drooped and one hand splayed out over her face, "what am I going to do with you?"

"Why are you getting onto me? He's…" Harry trailed off with a half-hearted wave in the direction of the departed imp. Unsure of exactly how to express his thoughts, he left his explanation incomplete.

"Fear is no reason not to give diplomacy at least a token attempt. You have no way of knowing whether or not you will need Ollivander's assistance in the future, but now you will need to approach on bended knee if you want his help."

Harry shook his head. She had a point, he knew that, but she was also right in that the Ollivander terrified him. That fear was probably baseless, but the knowledge that he was being irrational did not make it any less real. "Then let's hope I won't need it."

Sighing, Lash reached out and tousled his hair, her fingers digging deep into the rat's nest for a moment. "Nothing to do for it now, I suppose, nor is there any point in staying here. Let us return to Privet Drive until it is time to reclaim this wand."

* * *

Harry's last month with the Dursleys went more or less the same as the months had ever since he first met Lash. Uncle Vernon still ignored anything strange going on under his nose, even if that included Harry trying out some of the recipes in his new potions book on the kitchen range; Aunt Petunia still treated him with the distant civility she always had, though thankfully he had not had to go back and toy with her mind after Lash's more detailed overview the year previous; and Dudley still sat on the couch staring mindlessly at the telly. Most of the month he spent in his shed, looking over his new school books with the same fascination he had always held for magic. Some of the theory was strange, and some he knew was outright wrong considering what Lash had taught him how to do, but many of the actual spells were just begging to be experimented with.

On the first of September, he woke up far earlier than he intended, and at five o'clock, no one else in the house was awake. To fill the time, he decided to finally tackle an issue that had vexed him of late: how in the world he was going to attune his holly wand.

"We know it can happen," he muttered to himself and Lash, sitting on the carpeted floor and glaring in frustration at the magical stick. The replacement casing was not polished and stained the way the wand had first been, just a pale sliver of wood, though Harry did not know whether that was due to the Ollivander being petty or for some legitimate reason. "If it couldn't, we wouldn't have had this problem in the first place. But how do I duplicate that?"

"I still believe you will need to focus on your emotions, just as you called forth your intent with your other foci," Lash pointed out. He could not see her, but he could feel her back pressed against his, the two leaning ever so slightly into each other.

He sighed. "But we tried that already. It didn't work."

"Because you grew bored."

"No, because it didn't work." They had tried that fairly early in their experiments; it was the logical thing to do since the phoenix feather in the middle was meant to store his emotional energy, but when Harry made his attempt, he had felt like his magic was just slipping off and through the wand rather than flowing into it and staying there. It was as though it had nothing to grab hold of. Lash's examination of what he was feeling and the multicolored sparks that the wand spat out validated his doubt. He had gotten bored after a few hours of working on it only to find that all his efforts were futile, true, but his boredom was not the cause of that particular failure. "It has to be the lack of runes."

"The nephilim script does not contain any characters or scripts that would work to hold emotion. That language, as are all those I know, is meant for channeling and holding on to intent. The foci of this world do not function like that, and adding intent to a focus that has already stored emotion is a recipe for disaster."

That he couldn't argue against, and if the analogy of a self-firing gun were not already true, that would definitely make it so. "There's nothing, nothing at all? Maybe not nephilim runes, but Babylonian or Egyptian or something? No one ever tried to make an emotional focus like this or used runes to store emotions?"

She sighed in frustration and let the back of her head drop onto his, and he leaned into her while closing his eyes. These were the most irritating times he had experienced with Lash, when not even she with her vast knowledge could figure something out. But this was just sad; no one had ever even attempted it? Not one of the ancient languages that had sprung up over the eons worked for this? With all the people who had lived and all the different cultures, they all dealt with their problems the exact same way?

A thoughtful frown appeared as his mind churned over that last question. There was something there, some seed of an idea, but he was missing the pieces he needed to fit everything together and make it sprout. Different people, different societies, different writings… "Lash? How did people first figure out that certain symbols were magical and others weren't?"

"That is not quite how runes work," the angel murmured. "By themselves, they do not mean anything, just as the patterns of an animal's tracks mean nothing. Runes work because wizards believe that they work and that the runes mean what they think they mean."

"Belief? That's it?"

"Belief, will, intent; all the same thing," Lash said with an air of dismissal. "It is the same with incantations. The incantations you use for your spells are, on their own, just collections of sounds. When you first learn a spell, you convince yourself that particular pattern will bring about a specific change in the world. That is why a spell will not work the first time you attempt it unless there are some extenuating circumstances, like when you entered Dudley's mind. You had just experienced psychomancy with me, and so your threshold of doubt was far lower than it would be otherwise.

"Much of magic is like that; Dresden, for instance, associated certain colors with different purposes because that is how he had been taught, even though he knew intellectually that those connections were all in his head. It is why any runic language can be used for any purpose; they all work equally well as their fellows."

Harry opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. "But then, why can't I just do the same thing? Make something up and say it works with emotions rather than intent?"

"It is not that it cannot be done, per se, so much as it is exceptionally difficult. Making up an incantation is one thing; the effect is transient and immediate, so if you begin to doubt yourself a second after you finish, no harm is done. The spell has already been cast. Runework, however, is far longer lasting, and it would fall apart if you lost your belief in the symbols."

"So now all my foci are going to fail?" he asked in sudden panic. If he had to believe the runes would work, didn't knowing that it was all in his head mean they would stop working?

Lash laughed lightly, and he felt his pounding heart slow. "No, no. Remember what I said about Dresden and his colors? Just because you know something intellectually is false, or at least more complicated than you tend to think it, does not change whether you accept it as true, though the opposite is most certainly the case. You believed me when I taught you those runes, and the success you have had since then has only reinforced those lessons."

"Oh, that's good." Letting out a relieved sigh, he returned to his previous point. "But I still don't see what is so difficult about making new runes. It's just a matter of convincing myself that they work."

"And therein lies the trouble. You will know that they do not actually mean anything, and that will cause them to fall apart."

"But it's been done before. Lots of times before," he pointed out.

With a faint scoff, the angel replied, "Indeed, it has happened many times before, over many decades or centuries and at the hands of many, many people teaching their students, who would believe them. One person creating an entirely new language for himself to use? Theoretically possible, but the chances of success are less than insignificant."

"Except I'm not trying to create a whole new language. I just want one rune for emotion that I can stick in a sequence and use as an anchor for attuning." Sliding away, he spun around and looked up at Lash, who had turned herself to face him at the same time he had. "And if it doesn't work, then there's no real harm done, right? We've just wasted a bit of time."

"One rune." He nodded, and she tapped her chin with her finger while looking at the floor. "Perhaps it could be done. You would want to place the 'divide/transfer' digraph and 'concentration' on opposite sides to support it and remind yourself of its meaning, though; maybe put 'unity' or 'combination' at the conclusion terminus? No, 'entirety' would be better than 'unity'. And you would need to include 'identity' somewhere in the sequence to make up for the lack of inherent intent." Shaking herself out of her rumination, she said, "But this is all academic unless you actually have an emotion rune."

He smiled. The fact that Lash had drifted off into her theorizing meant she was no longer totally against the idea, and if he gave her time to mull the problem over, she would probably create a script that would do exactly what he wanted. She just sometimes got too bogged down in the potential complications to want to try something experimental. "So how do you make a brand-new rune?"

"Slowly and carefully." Harry scowled at the mocking comment, and Lash gave him a wide, toothy smile, pleased at his irritation in the way only his angel could be. "The first step will be the hardest: conceiving of it. How it looks, how it is written. That image needs to be solid in your mind before you even think of using it. I would recommend you work it over again and again in your mind, then write it out repeatedly. Doodle it in the margins of your notes or trace it on your bedspread or stir it into your soup; anything, so long as you can see the symbol as clearly in your mind as it can possibly be. Only after that should you try carving it." Leaning back, she thought for another moment before continuing, "Place the rune first in scrap wood. That should give you the opportunity to see if it will properly bond with your magic, and if that test is successful – and only if – we will start working on the actual script for your wand."

"So test, test again, and then check everything all over a third time?" he summarized with a sigh. "This is going to take longer than a couple of weeks, isn't it?"

The guardian angel rolled her eyes at his impatience. "Several months at least, maybe a full year. And that is assuming this works at all. What you are attempting is not going to be easy, but if you want to see it happen, you will need to put in the effort."

"I'm not afraid of a little hard work," Harry shot back. "Besides," he added, putting on a wan smile, "it isn't like we have any other ideas, is it? I suppose this will give us enough time to come up with something else to try."

"True enough, sad as it is to admit that."

* * *

The clock overhead was just chiming half past ten when the Dursleys' car rolled to a stop in front of King's Cross Station. "Thanks, Uncle Vernon," Harry said, sliding out of the vehicle and grabbing his old-fashioned steamer trunk from the boot. Slamming the lid down, he waved to the enormous man. "I'll let you know when school is supposed to end and you need to pick me up. It should be sometime in June, but I don't know for sure."

"Right." And with that grunted comment, his uncle shifted the car in gear and drove away.

Harry sighed, but in the end he just hefted his trunk and started walking toward the platforms. It was a very good thing he no longer expected any of the Dursleys to treat him like real family, else he would be persistently and sorely disappointed. They were nice, even kind, to him, but there was always a gulf between him and his non-magical relatives. More than once he had considered mucking about in their heads some more, _forcing_ them to treat him as though he were a second son rather than just someone who lived in their house, but he always mastered the impulse. He doubted it would work, and in the unlikely case it did, he would always know that it was artificial, that their behavior was purely due to his manipulations. At least the treatment he received at their hands now was somewhat honest.

Shaking those melancholy thoughts away, he turned his mind instead to what was coming. He was about to attend a school for magic, where he would learn how to brew potions and wave a stick around and write essays instead of discussing the nature of magic with Lash and…

"All right, Harry, get a grip on yourself," he muttered, knocking the heel of his hand against the center of his forehead a few times. "Everything will be fine. It's just a new school. It'll be fun. I hope." A giggle sounded to one side, and he caught a glance of a couple of middle-aged women watching him before they pointedly looked away and chattered to each other as though they had not just been laughing at his misfortune. Huffing at their attitude and pretending not to hear them giggling some more, he stomped away.

Finally arriving at platform nine, he leaned back against the brick wall that divided it from platform ten and looked out over the bustling crowd. Before she had left, McGonagall had explained how he was supposed to get onto the Hogwarts Express and given him a sparkly purple ticket with the platform number on it. Harry grimaced at the memory; he had asked why he had to pass through a brick wall in front of a bunch of people who did not know about magic rather than use that Floo-fireplace-thing to get there from the Leaky Cauldron, which had only seemed to irritate the woman yet again. At the time, he hadn't thought anything about it – it was hardly the worst thing he had said to her that day – but it was only while waiting for the Ollivander to finish fixing his holly wand that he recalled that she had said she would be one of his teachers, and putting himself on her bad list from the word 'go' was probably not the best idea he had ever had.

Lash had been less than helpful when he mentioned that, telling him that he was a big boy and should know better that to brass someone off just because he could.

Satisfied that no one was watching him, he took a step backwards and through the bricks. Darkness engulfed him until he took a second step and turned around, and then he was through whatever magic hid the entrance and could see the platform itself, imaginatively enough numbered nine and three-quarters. The place was packed, just like the rest of King's Cross, but that illusion of normality was ruined by most of these people wearing robes and pointy hats, instead lending everything an air of surreality.

Harry took a fortifying breath and forced himself into the sea of humanity, dodging the occasional elbow as he tried to push his way through and to the scarlet steam engine that sat smoking on the tracks. Finally he was safe, and seeing the number of cabins that already had people sitting and talking inside, he threw his trunk onto the overhead rack of the first empty cabin he found. He rubbed his shoulder with a grimace; he had cast a spell on the trunk that had lightened it so he could easily carry it despite the sheer size and number of books it contained, but he was pretty sure the spell had started fading away shortly after he stepped onto the platform.

It looked like he would have to break out _The Essential Thirty_ and take another look at that spell, that or practice casting it by himself. He just felt so silly waving his holly wand around, as though he were trying to conduct an imaginary orchestra.

After a few minutes of people-watching, he eventually pulled his trunk down and snagged that book along with a quill and a bottle of blue ink. He might as well get in some more practice working with the primitive implements while he had the chance. Flipping though the section dedicated to various kinetic spells and making occasional annotations and comments to himself proved an effective way to pass the time, and it was only the train lurching away from the platform that let him know eleven o'clock had arrived.

Before he could get back to his reading, which had progressed through the section he was originally checking and into the one about common household charms, the door to the cabin slid open to reveal two girls, one blonde and the other with deep red hair, the kind Harry had only ever seen on boxes of hair dye. "Do you mind if we join you?" the blonde asked, jiggling the trunk in her hand and toying nervously with one of her pigtails. "Everywhere else is full."

A quick look at his book and quill, and he shrugged. He had already accomplished what he wanted as far as that was concerned, and talking with a couple of wizard-born kids – at least, he assumed they were since they were wearing robes, the cuts and colors different than those he had bought for school – should be fun. "Sure."

"Thanks." The girls stowed their luggage in the opposite rack from his, the ease with which they hefted them evidence that they, too, had taken advantage of a Featherlight Charm. Once they had flopped onto the bench, the blonde said, "I'm Hannah, Hannah Abbott, and this is Susan Bones. Nice to meet you." The redhead nodded in agreement.

"Nice to meet you, too," he replied with a smile. "My name's Harry Potter."

The girls smiled for just a moment before his words seemed to reach their brains; the instant when that happened was made obvious by the sudden widening of their eyes. The cabin was silent for several seconds while they just stared at him.

And then Susan squealed high and loud enough to shatter glass.

* * *

**Wow, Susan, way to make a first impression.**

**I get the impression that the Harry of canon would care very much about what James and Lily might have thought about things, but this Harry clearly does not. There's a reason for that, and while I'll reveal it next chapter, I want you guys to mull it over and tell me what you think. It's really not that hard to figure out. And yes, Ollivander was referencing Jen Black in his little reminiscence. Shameless self-promotion for the win!**

**Silently Watches out.**


	12. The Sorting Hat

**Secundum:** The mention of Jen in last chapter was mostly just a shout-out. There are some background details that will be the same for all my stories because my muse hates reworking problems she's already found a reasonable explanation for, but whether they play an important role in any one particular tale or not…

**Byakugan789:** The Weasleys peripherally expect Harry to be at Platform 9¾ – how else is a student supposed to get to Hogwarts? Flying car? – but you're right, Ron didn't come looking for him because Fred and George didn't reveal his identity to the entire family. In rereading that scene and thinking on the likely reasons for Ron's appearance, I decided that even though I don't like the character on a personal level, I still should cut him a break on this one. He's an 11-year-old who had a chance to meet a celebrity he had probably idolized his entire life, and he took it. Nothing nefarious there.

The wife of a Ministry worker, especially the head of the office dedicated to keeping cursed and enchanted items out of Muggle hands, yelling about Hogwarts and Muggles and Platform 9¾ in the middle of a busy train station is another story entirely.

"**Harry and Lash are so arrogant/stupid because they keep acting the same way even though Lash knows nothing about magic in this world":** …You guys do remember that all the evocation and some of the thaumaturgy Lash taught Harry _works_, right? And that that specifically was part of the reason it took Lash so long to accept that she was in a different reality? Magic is different in the HP and DF worlds, but it's also very similar; the biggest difference is that the HP world doesn't have the Nevernever, so summoning spirits and brewing DF-style potions is out, but spells that don't involve that plane will work just fine in either reality, as you've already seen in _all the previous chapters_. True, there are aspects of this world's specific magic that Lash and Harry are still learning about, and the culture and creatures are very different, but to assume that Lash's prior knowledge is worthless or inapplicable is a HUGE mistake.

**If anyone catches the reference in this chapter, I will be surprised and pleased. And a number of you already figured out why Harry doesn't care nearly as much about Lily and James, but for those who didn't, keep reading. It's all but spelled out.**

**Disclaimer:** Was Harry issued a Muggle-style train ticket for his first ride on the Hogwarts Express, with the platform number on it and everything, even though no one ever came by to check it and he never received another one in all his years of studying at Hogwarts? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

"_Nice to meet you, too," he replied with a smile. "My name's Harry Potter."_

_The girls smiled for just a moment before his words seemed to reach their brains; the instant when that happened was made obvious by the sudden widening of their eyes. The cabin was silent for several seconds while they just stared at him._

_And then Susan squealed high and loud enough to shatter glass._

* * *

**Chapter 12  
****The Sorting Hat**

Harry clapped his hands over his ears with a wince. Through his squinted eyes, he spotted Hannah doing the same and glaring pointedly at the redhead. Susan stopped her sonic assault a second later, and after waiting another moment to make sure she was not going to offer an encore, he slowly lowered his hands. "_Ow_."

"Sorry," the girl squeaked, her face as crimson as her hair. She was too embarrassed to meet his eyes.

"Merlin, Susie, was that really called for?" Hannah demanded as she rubbed her own ears. "I'm sitting right next to you."

"I said I was sorry! I didn't mean to! I just wasn't expecting… er…"

The blonde sighed and shook her head. Turning to Harry, she jerked her head toward Susan and shrugged, though the gesture lost most of its nonchalance when he saw she was also flushed, even if it were not as much as her friend. "You'll have to excuse her. She's just fancied you since she was old enough to write her name as _'Mrs. Susan Potter'_."

"Hannah!"

"She… fancies me?" he repeated slowly. Sure, Lash might tease him mercilessly, but they both knew that was just her having a bit of fun at his expense. He had never entertained the notion that her feelings toward him were romantic. Not that he would want them to be, either; that would just be weird. This girl, though… "Why? You've never even met me before today."

Hannah blocked the hand that tried to cover her mouth and explained, "Because of the books about you! She's loved those things ever since they came out."

"Books? What books?"

The girls stopped their impromptu slap-fight and looked at him as though he had grown a second head. "The book series," Hannah repeated. "You know, _Harry Potter and the Vulpine Mask_? _Harry Potter and the Forgotten Castle_? _Harry Potter and the Demon's Daughter_? You've never heard of those?" she demanded when she saw his still-raised eyebrows.

"No, I haven't. No one has ever told me they wanted to write a book about me, and I definitely haven't done those kinds of things."

"So you didn't wrestle a dragon with your bare hands to save a village?" Susan asked.

He shook his head. "I've never even seen a dragon."

"And I bet you never found any lost civilizations," guessed Hannah with a pout. "If you never fought a dragon, you couldn't have done that, either."

Opening his mouth to deny it, he found himself remembering the dwarves. They could be considered a lost civilization from a human point of view, he supposed. "I wasn't looking for them," he finally replied, and Hannah's head popped up to stare at him. "Okay, I was, kind of, but it was still really accidental when I did find them."

Susan had an eager grin as she asked, "What about when you saved a princess and had to beat a hundred vampires to get to her? Did that happen, too? It was always my favorite story." Another blush lit her face at that confession.

"Aimee isn't a princess, much as she may act like it sometimes. She's just a friend," he said with a laugh that quickly disappeared. "And there is no way I killed a hundred vampires. One was more than enough. If there had been two, I wouldn't be sitting here. Although," he added as an afterthought, "it wasn't the vampire that was really the scariest part of the whole thing; it was the amarok."

"The what?"

"Giant zombie dog. Eight feet long, looks like it's made from bunches of different animal parts. They don't have any eyes, but their senses of hearing and smell are really good." A shudder ran down his spine as he recalled the terror that had hit him when he had been running for his life from one in the Paris Catacombs. "And even though they're so big, they are _fast_."

"If we're talking about favorite books, what about the one where you went looking for treasure on a pirate ship?" Hannah asked eagerly.

Woodsmoke. Screams. A splash as he fell into the ocean and sank. Harry squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath to calm himself down. Opening them again, he gave the girls a wan, tremulous smile. "I… I'd really rather not talk about that, if you don't mind." They looked away, embarrassment obvious on their faces, and he prompted, "But what about you two? Tell me some things about yourselves."

"There's not much to tell," Hannah said, taking charge of the conversation again. "My parents were good friends with Susan's, and since her aunt is always so busy running the DMLE, we all but grew up together. Our childhoods were perfectly ordinary."

He waited for her to continue, but when she did not, he prompted, "DMLE?"

This time it was the girls who looked at him in confusion, and Susan finally asked, "You know, the Department of Magical Law Enforcement? In the Ministry?"

"Never heard of it before. I don't know much about this culture," he explained to their dumbfounded faces, "and except for my little 'excursions', I grew up in the nonmagical world. The most exposure I've had to this side of things is two trips to Diagon Alley, and one of those was with Professor McGonagall to buy my school things."

"You were raised Muggle?" Hannah asked in a hushed voice. "So you don't know about anything? Fortescue's Ice Cream? The Grand Amphitheater? You've at least heard of the Weird Sisters, right?"

"The who?"

Both girls gasped, and the blonde waved her arms wildly. "The greatest band in the history of ever! Susan, you brought your music box with you, right?"

"Yeah. Give me a second." Standing up to pop open her trunk and rummage through it, Susan added, "Oh, and I forgot to tell you, but Auntie took me shopping yesterday, and I convinced her that we had to stop at the Awesome Din, so I have their new concert with me, too."

"Wicked!"

Harry hazarded a glance to the seat next to him where Lash was sitting, but all his curiosity earned was a shrug. "I have no idea what they are talking about."

Susan seemed to have found what she was looking for, though, and she sat back down and set her 'music box' on her lap. The name was certainly literal: the object was a cube, five centimeters to a side, made of blue glass and appearing to contain a whitish-grey smoke. Black circles were stuck on the four sides; of the two he could see, one had Roman numerals written around the edge in silver while the other displayed the twelve zodiac symbols. On the top was a crystal teardrop, and Susan plucked it off to reveal a small tube leading toward the center of the box. She showed another box, this small enough to be concealed in one hand and wrapped up in brown paper, to Hannah, which elicited a great deal of excited giggling before she unwrapped it. "Auntie let me get the deluxe set," she said when she saw him looking confusedly at the two red lozenges sitting in the white box, "and in addition to the concert, it also has a collection of songs Myron Wagtail sang acoustic for the charity benefit he was part of last year. His voice is just so… _ooh_."

Shaking off her daydream at Hannah's impatience, which included the blonde's elbow burying itself in her ribs, she dropped one of the pills down the tube and replaced the stopper. A pause to fiddle with the dials, and then she gave the box a quick shake that turned the grey smoke bloody red.

"_Hello, Gloucester!"_

"Now I see why they called it a concert," Lash said as a man's voice and the accompanying cheers filled the compartment. He raised his hand to interrupt the girls' enjoyment of their album in favor of a few more questions, but she set her hand on his arm. "McGonagall said this trip would take between five and six hours. Listen to this with them, and then you will have something else to talk to them about.

"Besides," she added with an impish smile, "I am curious what the music from this culture sounds like."

* * *

They were about an hour through the concert when someone slid open the compartment door.

Harry quirked an eyebrow at the three boys standing there. The one in front – the leader of the little band if his expression was anything to go by – had a pale, pointed face and white-blond hair that had been slicked back with what was presumably a truly absurd amount of hair gel. He was also about the right size to be a fellow eleven-year-old, something that could not be said about his companions. Tall and burly, they resembled bodyguards more than anything, the one on the left with a bowl cut while the other's face was long and squared. If they were really eleven, they were truly overgrown for their age; had he seen them on their own, he honestly would have pegged them as being a couple of years his senior.

The pale boy glanced over the two girls disinterestedly, and then his eyes fell on Harry, specifically the thin scar on his forehead. "So it's true," he said, talking loudly to be heard over the music. "People are talking up and down the train about it, that Harry Potter's in this compartment. That'd be you, is it?"

It was a struggle not to laugh at that obvious lie. If people had been talking up and down the train about him, especially considering how the people in the bank had looked at him when his name leaked out, there would have been a procession of people traipsing in and out to catch a glimpse of him. More likely, this boy had been peeking in a number of compartments before finding this one. "If I'm not, I'm dreadfully confused."

His eyes drifted again to the larger boys, neither of whom looked like they were following the conversation, and the leader of the band said, "Oh, this is Crabbe, and this is Goyle." A thumb jerked over his shoulders in turn accompanied the names. "And my name's Malfoy. Draco Malfoy."

Could that have been any more pompous? Still, he resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "Nice to meet you, Malfoy Draco Malfoy," he returned instead, giving the boy's outstretched hand a polite shake. "I'd introduce myself, but we've already established who I am."

Draco's cheeks pinked in embarrassment.

The music shut off, and Harry glanced over to see that Susan had given her box another shake. "Why are you here, Malfoy?" Hannah demanded in the sudden silence.

"And hello to you, too, Abbott," Draco replied. The smile on his face was much like those Harry had seen politicians wearing on the telly: white teeth on display without a single shred of happiness behind them. "I just came by to say hello to our mutual friend here. You'll soon find out, Potter," he continued as he turned back to face Harry, "that who you associate with matters a great deal in society. Some wizarding families will help you go far while others… won't. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort."

"Are you saying we're the _'wrong sort'_, then?" Susan cut in, her temper overriding her previous general shyness.

"I would never say anything disparaging about the Bones family," came Draco's suave reply. He stayed silent a moment, only adding once Hannah opened her mouth to yell at him, "Nor about the House of Abbott, of course."

His cool grey eyes landed on Harry once again. "I know several people who would be eager to meet you. Very eager. Come with me, and we should be able to make all the introductions before we arrive at Hogwarts."

Harry's glance switched back and forth between Draco and Susan and Hannah, the boy confident and the girls looking almost nervous. There was too much context missing for him to feel confident making the choice that was being presented to him. "I'd love to, really, but I already promised Susan and Hannah that I would listen to this album – concert, sorry – with them. Maybe we can do the meet-and-greet once we're at school, instead? It would probably be more convenient than walking up and down the train trying to catch everyone."

Draco visibly mulled that offer over, and Harry crossed his fingers out of sight. He had tried to phrase his rejection as politely as possible, but with so few pieces of whatever puzzle this was, he had no way of knowing whether it was right. "Perhaps you have a point," Draco finally agreed. "I'll hold you to that."

As soon as the door shut behind the three boys, Hannah burst out, "What was that all about?"

"Funnily enough," Harry said, "I was going to ask you that exact same question."

"Why were you being so chummy with Malfoy?" Susan asked. Her arms were crossed, but while it might have been meant to look displeased and intimidating, it just came across as her curling up on herself.

"Because I've never met the guy? I'm more curious what that was between him and the two of you. You seem to know him."

"Not personally, not that I'd want to," Hannah bit out. "Dad and Mum always say that the Malfoys and their friends are bad news."

Okay, that didn't explain anything in the slightest. He glanced over at Susan, who added, "His father's Lucius Malfoy."

"That would be more helpful if I had ever heard of Lucius Malfoy before right now."

"He was allegedly one of You-Know-Who's followers," she explained, "and allegedly only because a judge agreed he had been put under the Imperius Curse and my auntie couldn't prove that he bribed the judge in question to say that. She says the Malfoys and those like them have always supported the same views You-Know-Who had, that Muggles are animals and that Muggleborns don't deserve any rights. Some of them even say that wizardkind should rise up and take over the world."

Weird. McGonagall hadn't said anything about it explicitly, but he had gotten the impression that she did not necessarily think much of nonmagical people. At the same time, she had also claimed to be the person in charge of introducing Muggleborns to magical society, so did she fall in this group with Lucius Malfoy _et al_ or not?

"A foolish view," Lash said as she stretched out in her seat. "The magical beings in this world have hidden themselves from the nonmagical humans for probably the same reason those in my world did: they were terrified that if they were ever exposed, they would be exterminated. When you find yourself outnumbered a million to one, what you personally can do to protect yourself becomes irrelevant."

And on that note, Susan and Hannah resumed listening to their music, though Harry found himself much less interested in it than he had been before this interruption.

* * *

When the train finally came to a stop, night had already fallen. Someone had announced their approach over a loudspeaker five minutes before their arrival, at which point the girls kicked Harry out so they could change into their school robes. If nothing else, at least it answered his unasked question about whether wizards and witches viewed robes as overclothes or actual clothes.

He still threw his robe on over his t-shirt and jeans, taking a moment to pull his shield torc out of his pouch and slip it around his left wrist.

Trudging out into the darkness, he and the other new students watched their seniors walk up a hill for a moment before a loud voice called out to them. The man approaching towered over them, twice Harry's own height, and the thick beard that covered the lower half of his face muffled his voice somewhat. "Firs'-years! Firs'-years over here!"

Harry, along with Hannah and Susan, followed the crowd down a steep, narrow path carved into the hillside. As they walked, the lapping of waves hitting the shore became clearer, and the giant man finally broke the silence that had fallen over them. "Yeh'll get your firs' look o' Hogwarts in a sec. It's jus' round this bend here."

The assembled students gasped as the path opened up. Not at the enormous dark lake that stood in front of them, though, but at the mountain beyond it, upon the foot of which was built a castle with numerous towers poking into the sky. The windows' lights were bent and blurred by the fog rising from the water's surface, lending the building a warm, ethereal glow.

"No more'n four to a boat!" the man ordered, breaking the spell that had fallen over the children and dragging their attention to a fleet of small boats waiting for them at the water's edge. The girls all but dragged him to one, the last seat being claimed by a boy with dull brown hair, and once everyone was situated the boats drifted away from the shore and glided silently toward the castle.

As they came closer and closer, Harry started to worry. There was no dock waiting for them, just an ivy-covered wall. "Heads down!" he heard as the first boat was about to ram into it, and then the plant-life parted like a curtain to show the black tunnel hiding behind it. Their own boat soon entered soon after, and from there it was a short trip to the end of the tunnel, where the boats ran aground on an artificial shore of pebbles and rocks. A flight of stone steps, the only other thing in the room with them, was their obvious destination, and they climbed up and watched the man knock on the tall wooden door at the top with his enormous fist.

The door swung open, and McGonagall stepped out to look down at them; if her eyes lingered on Harry, it was too short for him to notice. "The firs'-years, Professor McGonagall," the man told her unnecessarily.

"Thank you, Hagrid. I will take them from here."

The students trailed after the black-haired woman as she led them across the stone floor of the hall. Harry could not help his eyes rolling up and up toward the tall ceiling; the Dursleys' entire house could fit in here! "Welcome to Hogwarts," she said, pulling him out of his thoughts. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your Houses. The Sorting is a very important ceremony because, while you are here, your House will be something like your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your House, sleep in your House dormitory, and spend free time in your House common room."

Harry grimaced. His House might be something like his family, but he hoped that didn't mean he would have to use psychomancy to make them like him.

"The four Houses are named after the founders of this school: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin." Was it just him, or had she voiced the last name with just a hint of distaste? "Each House has its own noble history, and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your House points, while any rule-breaking will lose House points. At the end of the year, the House with the most points is awarded the House cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever House becomes yours.

"The Sorting Ceremony will take place in a few minutes in front of the rest of the school. I suggest you all smarten yourselves up as much as you can while you are waiting." This time her eyes did stray to certain students, a blond, round-faced boy whose cloak was pinned under his ear and another with bright red hair and some dirt smeared on the tip of his nose. "I shall return when we are ready for you."

The second McGonagall's back was turned, Lash reappeared at his side. "And any hopes of these seven years being interesting have now been dashed." He turned his head toward her and raised one eyebrow a tiny bit, and she elaborated, "Believe it or not, I have never been much of a 'team player'. Putting individuals into a group, restricting their identities outside of it, and then ordering them to compete against another group? A waste of time that would be far better utilized for self-advancement of some kind or another."

Lash not playing well with others? After spending a year and a half with her, _that_ he had no trouble believing. Still, something else about her little rant bothered him. "Restricting their identities outside it?" he whispered as softly as he could. Susan looked over at him, but a quick smile seemed to placate her.

"'_You will have classes with the rest of your House, sleep in your House dormitory, and spend free time in your House common room'_," Lash quoted, her voice a perfect imitation of McGonagall's. "In other words, every moment of your day should be spent with your assigned group. For rewards and punishments to be given to the group in aggregate as opposed to the person who earned them just furthers my point."

With Susan standing so close and apparently listening attentively, his response was less a whisper and more a subvocalization. "I don't think that's what she meant by it."

"Perhaps. We shall see soon enough."

Screams behind him caused him to whirl around, and he stared at what had just come through the walls. "Ghosts," he said in a flat voice. "They're real?"

"Of course they are," Hannah told him over the voices of the phantoms. Her pretense of calm did not change the fact that her hand was resting on her chest or that she was breathing a little fast. "Hogwarts is famous for them. Each of the Houses has one."

"Move along," McGonagall said, pushing one of the tall doors the rest of the way open. The ghosts took that as their signal to join the rest of the school, slipping through the stone wall as only beings incorporeal could. "The Sorting Ceremony is about to start. Form a line and follow me."

The room they entered looked even larger than the hallway had, and Harry felt himself gaping in awe. Thousands of candles floated in midair above the four long tables where the rest of the school was already seated, the flames reflected off the golden platters and plates and goblets. Looking farther up, he was amazed to see the open sky rather than a ceiling. A moment later, the beautiful view was revealed to be just an illusion when the scene wavered and faded to show the supporting beams and wooden roof, his anklet cutting through the lie exactly as he had designed it to do.

McGonagall marched them between the two center tables to where a rickety three-legged stool waited, a patched, faded, and pointed wizard's hat sitting on the top. A few seconds passed in silence. The hat twitched; two points retracted inwards while the hat bent and shook, almost like someone blinking awake, and a rip near the brim spread wide, a few rough stitches keeping the hole from opening too far. Then it spoke, or rather…

"A singing… hat," Lash said, pointing out the obvious as the hat enumerated the qualities of the four Houses. "And no signs that it is being animated by a spirit. It even calls itself a hat. Astonishing."

"Enchanted, maybe?" he asked. Items could be enchanted to have their own personalities? That would be really, really neat, actually, though he supposed it could also go terribly wrong. And knowing his luck, even if he could replicate it with another object – who wouldn't want something like a talking sword? – it would probably have some macabre requirement like only talking once it had spilt innocent blood or something.

She shook her head. "I have no idea. If so, I will give them points for creativity, at least."

Unrolling a long strip of parchment, McGonagall announced, "When I call your name, you will put on the Sorting Hat and sit on the stool to be Sorted. Abbott, Hannah!"

Hannah gave him and Susan a weak smile and stepped forwards. The Hat fell over her eyes, and a moment passed before it shouted "HUFFLEPUFF!" and the edges of her robe changed from black to a sunny yellow.

"Oh, good," Susan sighed. At his glance, she explained, "Both our families have been Hufflepuffs for forever. She was really worried that she'd be Sorted somewhere else. Imagine if she were sent to Slytherin; it'd be awful."

"Bones, Susan!"

While they were talking, Hannah had moved over to the table farthest on the right, and now Susan took her place on the stool. This time the Hat seemed to think a little longer, but soon enough it repeated, "HUFFLEPUFF!"

"This might be a problem."

"What?" he asked.

His angel pursed her lips as the next first-year, Terry Boot, approached the stool. "The Hat said the Sorting was based on personality, so it must make its decision based on some form of mind magic; the lines _'There's nothing hidden in your head / The Sorting Hat can't see'_ bear that out. Maybe it is mind-reading, maybe psychometry, or maybe something else entirely. However it does it, how do you think it would react to finding me lurking around in your head?"

Oh. That… could be bad. Lash had described to him early on just how terribly wrong things could go if he told anyone about her, and while the wizards clearly had a different society, they were still people at the end of the day. "So what should we do?"

"As good as it may be with psychomancy, I am better," she said with growing confidence. "Or, at least, I should be. I have had far longer in which to practice. Blocking it from entering your mind entirely would be easy, but that would only cause its own issues when people start asking why it cannot read you. Instead…" Lash thought for a second as Millicent Bulstrode became the first new student to go to Slytherin. "Yes, that should work. I can hide my own presence without unduly retarding its analysis of your mind, and if it does not look too closely, I should also be able to project false memories for any time we discussed the truth of my nature. It is a rough plan, I realize, but I cannot make a better plan without knowing more about its capabilities."

Mulling over the suggestion for a while and looking for any obvious flaws in her plan that she might have overlooked, Harry finally nodded just as Morag MacDougal ran to the Ravenclaw table to make way for Draco, who barely had time to put the Hat on before it Sorted him in Slytherin. He supposed that answered the question of whether McGonagall was a friend of the boy's father, though now her attitude made even less sense. "Do what you can. If it all falls apart, we'll deal with it together. If that's not too much of an imposition for you, of course."

Lash laughed gaily. "Working with you, an imposition? Never. You are stuck with me, Harry."

Several minutes and an equal number of names passed before McGonagall called out, "Perks, Sally-Anne!"

His head popped up at that. Sally-Anne? Sure enough, the blonde girl that scurried past him looked almost exactly like the girl he had met on the slavers' ship, albeit cleaned up and dressed in clothes she hadn't worn for three days straight. He smiled faintly as he noticed how nervous she was acting, far more than the situation should have called for; maybe anxiety was just her normal state? She sat on the stool for nearly a minute before the Hat finally exclaimed, "HUFFLEPUFF!", and she trotted over to the table to claim a spot next to Justin Finch-Fletchley, the brunet who had sat with him, Susan, and Hannah on the boat ride across the lake.

McGonagall glanced down at her list again before raising her eyes to meet his. "Potter, Harry."

The room erupted with hissed whispers as he walked to the stool and sat, and he had just a second to see the entire school leaning forward and to the sides to get a good look at him before the brim of the Hat fell over his eyes. He hoped Lash's plan worked.

"Hmm," said a small voice in his ear. "Difficult. Very difficult. Plenty of courage, I see. Not a bad mind, either. There's talent, oh my goodness, yes, and a nice thirst to prove yourself, now that's interesting… So where shall I put you?"

No mention of angels or, worse, hearing voices that weren't really there? That was a good start.

The voice – one that was really there – hummed again. "No preference? Ah, you've learned not to make important decisions without having some information to work from first. You're a cautious one, aren't you? You know things will go poorly if you aren't. All options being equal, better to run away and return prepared than to make do with what you already have with you. But still you have that core of nobility in you, how interesting.

"And your mind. Keen, honed like a knife. You've even enchanted your own secondary foci already? Most impressive," the voice purred. Harry's fingers tightened around the seat of the stool, but before he could say anything, the Hat continued, "But learning itself isn't the point, is it? You want to know about what you need now, and if the rest of the book becomes relevant later, you'll worry about it then. Applicability trumps all else.

"You're no stranger to hard work, are you, Mr. Potter? So long as it advances your goal, you will put up with even the most tedious of tasks, admittedly not without some grumbling. And your loyalty, once earned, is like a great tree providing shelter and succor to what friends you do have, to your teacher—" He stiffened in worry, and the Hat twisted on his head. "You wanted to keep her a secret, didn't you? Because… you've come to realize people wouldn't accept her being around you? No, that's not it. What is this…?"

The Hat was silent for a time, during which Harry's heart raced faster and faster, but when it next spoke its voice was filled with humor. "Ah, now I see. It all comes back to her in the end, doesn't it? You know she can defend herself far better than you can, you know you have put her on an impossible pedestal, but still you want to protect her from any who might wish her harm. You love her, don't you? Just as all sons love their mothers. But you don't want her to know that, or perhaps, you don't want to tell her. You fear that she will treat you differently if you reveal how important she is to you."

Harry grimaced. No, he hadn't wanted to let Lash know about that just yet, but with how dire this situation was, there was no way she hadn't just heard the Hat say it out loud.

"Instead, you want to show her," it continued. "That lies at the heart of all your learning; you want to surpass her. No, not surpass," the Hat immediately corrected itself, "_impress_. This woman, the one to whom you feel you owe everything and see as the epitome of what a witch should be like, is the center of your world, and your deepest, most heartfelt ambition is to do something so incredible, so extraordinary, that she will be rendered speechless.

"Something that, no matter what else happens, will stand as proof that you were worthy of her teachings."

He sat silently, his emotions churning in his gut. Phrased like that, it sounded so stupid, the dreams of a child. What did it say about him, he wondered, that all he really wanted in life was for an angel, a being who had studied magic since the dawn of creation, to look down at him and say he had made her proud?

"Perhaps you are more easily Sorted than I first thought," mused the voice. "Yes, it seems so obvious now. Off with you, and spend your time wisely in…"

* * *

**I wasn't going to include the Harry Potter adventure series – I'm not particularly a fan of that cliché – but since so many people asked about them, here you go. Take a moment to enjoy it; this is a throwaway joke, and the books will never be mentioned again in this story.**

**The shorter and pithier version of Lash's comment about a wizard–Muggle conflict is the classic **_**'Quality trumps quantity, but quantity has a quality all its own'**_**. By the way, does anyone know who came up with that? I've seen it attributed alternately to Lenin, Stalin, and the US DOD, but I have no clue which of these it actually was or if it was someone else entirely.**

**Has anyone else noted how contradictory the series is on the issue of normal dress? Book 1 mentions that Harry and Ron put their school robes over their regular clothes, and Fudge wears a (admittedly green) suit in book 3, but by book 4, wizards have no clue how to 'dress Muggle', which I find hard to believe if they have the same fashion, and wear robes even when they're supposed to be trying to blend in. Then, in book 5, everyone seen inside the Ministry wears robes – including Lucius Malfoy, who doesn't work there – yet Umbridge, an anti-Muggle bigot of the highest order, teaches in a pink cardigan. Please, Ms. Rowling, all I ask is for there to be a **_**little**_** consistency.**

**Wait, you really thought I'd end the chapter there? I know I'm evil when it comes to cliffhangers, but even I have **_**some**_** standards.**

* * *

"…SLYTHERIN!"

* * *

**Picking which House Harry would get Sorted into was actually a major dilemma on my part; I was sorely torn between Slytherin and Hufflepuff, and a case could be made for either of them. In the end, I literally rolled dice to make the decision, and it was the Snake Pit that came up on top. (It also means that when **_**Team Hellhound**_** is complete, I'll have a Harry in each House, which is kind of cool.)**

**Unfortunately, Harry isn't going to have as easy a time as most other Slytherin Harrys do…**

**Silently Watches out.**


	13. The House of Slytherin

**Only Byakugan789 and theeyes1 recognized the talking sword Harry thought about making as Chaz from the webcomic **_**Sluggy Freelance**_**? Disappointing, but not terribly surprising. I definitely recommend it to everyone, but fair warning: it's been updating more or less daily since 1997, so trawling the archives is going to take a **_**long**_** time. It took me longer to read **_**Sluggy**_** than it did to get through all of **_**Worm**_**.**

**Disclaimer:** Did Harry, Ron, or Hermione – especially Hermione, as she's the one who figured everything out throughout the series – ever stop to consider that if three first-years, two of whom had known about magic for a mere ten months, could get through the obstacles 'guarding' the Philosopher's Stone, there was no way those traps would have done more than momentarily delay a fully trained wizard trying to steal it? If not, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 13  
****The House of Slytherin**

Albus dropped heavily into the chair behind his desk and covered his face with one hand. This was not how tonight was supposed to play out. He had been prepared for young Mr. Potter to follow his parents' footsteps and be Sorted into Gryffindor. The house of the Lions was the only place a proper hero could come from, after all, and the boy was obviously meant to be the hero the world needed. Instead, he had sat down at the villains' table, a soft smile on his face as though he saw nothing wrong with the manner in which the world has just shifted to a course it was never meant to take.

No, this was the exact opposite of the way things were supposed to go!

Perhaps he would not have been quite so distraught with the Sorting were it not for the quiet warnings Minerva had passed along to him following her meeting with the boy. Harry Potter, she said, had none of the friendly humor of James nor the wide-eyed wonder of Lily; what filled him instead was a self-possessed focus, cold where they were warm and disdaining what they would have eagerly accepted. All throughout their trip, she could not help but feel that he had been silently judging the society that his parents had given their lives for, and then she confessed that she feared he found it wanting.

It was like watching history repeat itself all over again. A Transfiguration professor going to introduce a Halfblood boy to the Wizarding World only to discover someone who had already discovered magic on his own, and more importantly, had learned how to use it to harm others. The wards that had injured her, her belief that the Imperius Curse had been practiced on the Dursleys? How was that any different than hanging other children's pets or torturing helpless Muggles because he wanted to? Albus had allowed Tom to wander Diagon Alley alone rather than accompany him the way Minerva had Harry, but considering that Tom had tried to burn their world to the ground, was it unlikely that he had viewed the people there with the same indifferent gaze Harry had? And they both were sent to the Snake Pit, where Albus feared that Harry might sway the bigots and the blood purists to follow him despite his heritage just as his predecessor had done fifty years ago.

"Hat," he finally sighed, "what did you think of Harry Potter? Why send him to Slytherin?"

The Sorting Hat twitched and blinked at him. "Mr. Potter has ambition in spades and the cunning to get around obstacles placed in his path. In Slytherin, he will find others with the same mindset and who will be able to goad him to greater heights."

"Was there truly nowhere else you could have possibly sent him? If not Gryffindor, would he fit so poorly in Hufflepuff, or even Ravenclaw?" Albus demanded.

"Gryffindor?" the Hat scoffed. "The child would never have been at ease there. Godric had an eye for daring and impulsiveness in addition to chivalry, and while Mr. Potter has the third, the first and second are traits he would reject. He has wit and a sharp mind, I will grant him that, but that is not enough to send him to the Ravens' tower.

"I will admit that he could have fit in Hufflepuff, though his first few months would have been a tad rough. It takes time to earn his trust – time or an utterly remarkable deed, I should say – which would set him at odds with the current crop of Badgers. His loyalty once gained is without question, however, and as his teacher discovered, if motivated he will fulfill whatever task is set before him to the best of his ability. But in the end, his ambition simply proved greater."

"Teacher?" This was the first Albus had heard about any teacher. Maybe it was just a Muggle Harry had grown up with, but his mind could not help but think of the strange runes Minerva had mentioned. If he had been _taught_ magic rather than discovering it all on his own… The older wizard was unsure if that was a better or worse option. "What did this teacher tutor him in?"

"Magic."

"What kind of magic?"

The brim of the Hat twitched in its version of a shrug. "Various kinds. I do not recall all the details. It was not pertinent to the Sorting."

Albus sighed. While the Hat was part of Hogwarts and therefore would obey his commands as Headmaster, including commands to report what information it had gleaned from the newly Sorted children's minds, it still had its own directives that it followed, one of which limited its perusal and retention of the first-years' memories to only that which were necessary to Sort them into their Houses. This was not the first time that particular restriction had stymied own self-imposed task of guiding his students into being the best people they could be, but it was definitely the most frustrating. "Very well. What is the name of this teacher, then?"

"Hmm." The Hat swayed back and forth in thought. "The only name I can recall him using for her is _'Lash'_."

Well, that was so obviously a pseudonym that it was nearly painful. It also made him feel even worse about just who the person hiding behind it was if she were that cautious about her identity. "And what did she look like?"

"Blonde, moderately tall. I really did not pay that much attention. It was not pertinent—"

"—to his Sorting. Yes, yes, I know." Rubbing his temples, Albus leaned back in his chair. Not only did he have to deal with a boy-hero who was already far too similar to the enemy he was meant to fight, but guiding Harry back into the person he was supposed to be was already going to be hard enough thanks to the views of the children he now shared a House with. The possibility of his Dark witch of a tutor further corrupting him when he went back to the Dursleys and the wards over their house for the summer was not something Albus could just let go.

If this were a normal year, it would not be a great problem for him to devote much of his free time – and whatever work time he could squeeze out by pushing some of his less important duties off to Minerva – to questioning the inhabitants of Surrey and ferreting out the identity of this 'Lash' woman, but this year was far from normal. He had heard whispers of a dark presence lurking in the forests of Albania, rumors of a foul spirit that preyed on animals, but particularly serpents, draining them of their vital energy. A spirit that had supposedly possessed Muggle children and used them to scurry about from place to place, always moving westward.

A spirit that apparently spoke English with a British accent when it was not slipping in and out of a different language that sounded more like a snake's hiss than any human tongue.

That had been the clue that led him to his otherwise absurd conclusion: Tom Riddle, Voldemort, had returned. He did not know how the Dark wizard had clawed his way back from the grave, or if perhaps Tom had been transformed in some way on that Halloween rather than killed, but whichever option was correct, it meant nothing good. That the timing was so poetic, both Tom and Harry reentering the magical world at the same time, only made him more suspicious. Equals in their banishment, equals in their return; the words of Sybil's prophecy echoed disturbingly in his mind.

To that end, he had constructed a plan to investigate his theory. Tom had chased after the Philosopher's Stone during the tail end of the War, and in his quest, he had discovered that Nicolas had actually hidden it in London, where he and his wife Perenelle would not be so easily recognized as in their native Paris and a holdover from a bygone era when no one would have ever considered that a French wizard might keep his greatest treasure in England. Tom would need to restore his body before he could reveal himself, and with the Stone's capability to heal mortal wounds in addition to simply extending one's life, he would desire it more than ever.

It had taken Albus months to convince Nicolas and Perenelle that his suspicions had merit and that he had not simply taken leave of his senses, and that delay had nearly proven to be their undoing. Armed with the number to the Gringotts vault in question and a letter written by Nicolas that authorized access to the contents with, Rubeus had carried the Stone to safety only hours before an unknown wizard or witch had broken inside in an attempt to steal it. Had Nicolas held firm just one day more, it would have been lost forever.

But thankfully, now it was safely in his possession. All that remained was the question of what to do with it. He had promised Nicolas and Perenelle that he would keep it secure, which he planned to do, but with the actual thief's identity still a mystery – though he had his suspicions – it was crucial that he discover exactly who it was. To that end, he had decided to hide it inside the school, more specifically in one of the many hidden passages. He had also asked for the help of several of the professors to construct traps for anyone trying to break into Hogwarts for it, telling them that this was at the behest of Nicolas himself. And just so the thief could find it, he had announced its location to the entire student body at dinner that very night, along with a warning that should keep the students from wandering inside. It would take the staff time to set everything up, and he had his own ideas about how to keep the Stone out of anyone else's grasp, but until they had a chance to finalize everything, it would stay safely on his person.

And yet… It was that _'and yet'_ that Albus knew was going to get him into trouble, for a terrible possibility had made its presence known during the planning process. Assume the prophecy was real. Specifically, assume that the line _'and either must die at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives'_ meant what it sounded like: that as long as both Harry and Tom walked this earth, only they could kill each other. The chances of Harry succeeding were infinitesimal, something that could only come to pass with either the greatest stroke of luck in the world or Harry resorting to magics that would make him just as much a threat to society as Tom was. Even the most foolhardy gambler would hesitate to put his galleon on Harry. But what if the other likelihood came to pass? If Tom killed Harry, instead, what would happen?

Would killing Harry mean that Tom could then be properly laid to rest? If that were the case…

The thought bubbled sickeningly in his belly. Tom could not be permitted to resume his war of terror, and in the grand scheme of things, the lives and safety of the thousands of wizards in Britain far, far outweighed Harry's own. Protecting them, not him, was of paramount importance, even if it meant knowingly sending a young boy to his death.

_'Create traps'_, he had told his professors, _'but do not make them so difficult that someone trying to get past them could not make it through. We do not want this person to have reason to come and go as he pleases if he manages to sneak into the school in the first place. No, we want him to slip inside and then be unable to go back. Make them simple enough that even a first-year with the right knowledge and skills would be able to bypass them. I will make sure that the very first obstacle is sufficient to keep any of the children from slipping into our net, but after that, we want him to make his way deeper inside. The farther we lead him down the path, the safer the students will be.'_

Albus shook his head. It was better that they never know just what the obstacles they were designing were really meant for; he doubted they would ever be able to forgive themselves.

The only hurdle left was that Harry had not conformed to the plan, and now he would have to lure the boy to the snare at the same time he pulled the thief in. Both had to be in position for the plan to work, and now he could not count on Harry jumping in to keep the thief from stealing the Stone. But he had already put his efforts into this plan, so throwing it out entirely was no longer in the cards.

He signed and leaned back in his chair, the architecture of his stratagem appearing in his mind and shifting as he reconsidered this and that. The final design was now up in the air, and would be until he had a better picture of just what Harry was like, but already he could see portions that needed to be changed, and changed soon.

Time was a luxury he simply could not afford to waste.

* * *

Following the other Slytherins down the stairs, Harry could not keep a small frown off his face. Ever since the Sorting Hat had made its pronouncement, he could tell that something was wrong, but what that was he did not have the faintest idea. A deathly silence had fallen over the room when he walked to the table sitting under the green banners bearing silver snakes, the quiet broken only by scattered, belated clapping from a few of his new housemates that was rapidly shushed. Draco had moved over to make a place for him, but while he appeared genuinely happy to count Harry among Slytherin's ranks, that smile had faded and disappeared under the hard stares of the older students. Even during dinner, there had been a bubble of avoidance that was seemingly centered on him, no one willing to cross whatever invisible boundary his presence created for anything more important than grabbing a platter of food.

The fifteen-year-old prefect at the head of the procession stopped and turned to an otherwise bare patch of wall. "The password for the common room will change on the first of every month, and it will be posted on the announcement board inside for one week before and after every change. If you forget it, ask one of your year mates or, if they don't remember, a prefect. Do not do this in the middle of the halls or in your classes; we have enough trouble with people from other houses pulling pranks without giving them access to our common room and dorms, as well. For September, the password is _Orphiucus_." At his order, a door that was carved and colored to perfectly match the wall it was set flush into opened inward, and the prefect guided them inside.

Whoever designed the Slytherin common room had apparently taken the House's icon as a source of inspiration, for the room was long with a low ceiling, looking faintly reminiscent of a snake hole. Spherical lamps hung from the stones of the ceiling, and the lack of windows anywhere in the room supported Harry's supposition that they were now rather deep underground. That said, it was not uncomfortable; low-slung couches and chairs upholstered in emerald fabric sat in front of a fireplace with an elaborate mantle, and a thick carpet covered a large section of the floor.

The rest of the House stomped in behind them and took places along the walls, and Harry's eyebrows rose when all the other first-years, none of whom had stood all that close to him in the first place, backed several steps away. Decidedly less than amused at the turn of events, Harry let his eyes pan across the room while his jaw clenched and his shoulders grew taught. Who would be the first to make a move? And just what would that move be?

"What do you think you're doing here, Potter?" one older boy finally said. The sneer he gave Harry made his buckteeth stand out even more. "Thought tricking the Sorting Hat was clever, did you?"

"Now, Flint, I'm sure there's a reason he's here," a tall girl cut in. For all that her words sounded supportive, there was an oiliness to her voice that Harry did not trust. "The Boy-Who-Lived wouldn't be made a Slytherin unless the Hat found something impressive."

Flint's sneer only grew larger and uglier. "He's a Halfblood. That makes him only a step above animals. I'd be surprised if he can even hold a wand right."

"Exactly my point. For him to be chosen for Salazar's House, he must be something else. So how about it, kid? What have you got that's so special?" she asked, turning to face Harry. That was their plan, he realized; she was just playing the good cop.

Harry's eyes flickered here and there, taking in the expressions of the rest of the House. Most people, he was somewhat relieved to see, were watching the proceedings with boredom, almost as though this was something that just needed to be checked off a list. Unfortunately, others were taking the confrontation in with looks of glee, anger, or even completely blank faces. They would be the ones he would have to deal with if whatever this was turned ugly.

Looking back at the girl, he felt his torc grow warm as he prepared to cast a quick shield. Had he known the night was going to turn out like this, he would have pulled more of his foci out of his pouch! "The Hat said I had ambition."

"Ambition, huh?" the girl echoed, flipping her blonde hair behind her head. "And just what ambition would a pampered boy-hero have?"

Pampered? Who would make an assumption like that for absolutely no reason? Then again, Susan and Hannah had spoken about that fiction series he apparently was the main character of, and that had framed their own opinions of him. So what stories had these people heard?

"My ambition is my own concern," he finally answered.

_'If you do not know what is being asked and cannot seek clarification for one reason or another, keep your answer intentionally vague,'_ Lash had once told him. _'In doing so, you will avoid committing yourself to anything and should be able to tease more information out of the person asking. Obviously this tactic will not work all the time, but it is still something to keep in mind.'_

Sadly, this looked to be one of those times where it would backfire. The girl questioning him gave him a haughty look and turned away, and Flint cracked his knuckles menacingly. Harry's fingers twitched. He would not strike first, but once Flint threw the first punch…

And then Flint turned away as well. That served as the signal for everyone to resume whatever conversations they had been part of before entering the common room, leaving Harry quite confused, and the prefect waved for the first-years to follow him to two doors set in the back of the room. "Girls' dorms are on the left; boys' are on the right. The first-year dorms are at the end of the hall, and your names will be on your respective doors. Breakfast is at quarter to eight, and for the first week a prefect will wait here until five minutes before that to guide anyone who feels they will not be able to find it on their own." And just like that, the boy walked off, his interest gone now that all his duties had been discharged.

The first-years glanced at each other in confusion before splitting up, and Draco took the lead as he marched down the hallway to the boys' dorms. A door on their right was labeled with a brass number seven, and ten feet farther was a door marked with a six, this time on the left. Walking all the way to the end and through the door with a one on it, they faced another short corridor. Only half of the doors here had plaques nailed to them, and Harry found his own in the middle of the three doors on the left-hand side.

The clap of wood on stone made him look to his left, and then the same sound came from the rest of the doors as all the other boys in his year shut the doors to their dorms. "No, it's fine. I didn't want to hang out tonight, anyway," he muttered to himself as he pushed his own door closed and twisted the key waiting in the lock. The furnishings of the small room were sparse: just a bed with a green quilt, his trunk at the foot of the bed, a short bookshelf next to the bed with an oil lamp, and a desk on the other side of the room bearing a pair of candles. Shucking off his robe and tossing it onto the desk, he fell face-first onto the bed. "What was that all about?" he asked, his voice garbled into incomprehensibility.

Thankfully, the person he wanted to answer understood him just fine. "Which part?" Lash asked, the bed sinking under her weight as she sat down next to him. He sighed when her fingers carded gently through his hair. "The confrontation in the common room? I believe they were looking for something. Possibly it relates to your vanquishing of this You-Know-Who character, at least if Hannah's accusations that their parents were supporters of the man were accurate, but exactly what they expected I have not the faintest idea. The other boys going straight to their own rooms? It might have been a show of solidarity with the others in the common room, or it might have been that they wanted to put their things away before they went to sleep."

He rolled over to look up at her. "What Flint called me, _'Halfblood'_. What do you think it means?"

"My guess is that it was a reference to your heritage. Muggleborns are what they call wizards who manifest magic despite their parents having none, and McGonagall said that your mother was a Muggleborn while your father's family was composed of wizards for centuries. Half your ancestry is established; half is new."

Nodding at that explanation, he added, "And it's going to be a problem, isn't it?"

"I think some might try to make it one, yes."

"But they didn't do anything tonight. So either they aren't sure if they're going to do anything, or they are and want time to plan it out." Hopping up, he started pacing the floor. "What do you see them doing?"

"Assuming they would prefer to stay hidden while doing this, there are a few things they could try. Perhaps they will try to attack you in the halls, where they can easily retreat back into the crowd," she suggested, counting them off on her fingers, "or they might turn to 'pranks' that are just a little too aggressive so they can weasel out of any punishment should they be caught, or they could try to attack you through your belongings rather than strike directly. I think the last is the most likely, at least in the short term; it poses minimal risk to them while offering substantial effectiveness, and with everyone in private rooms, they would not have to worry about collateral damage.

"On the other hand, that also gives you an advantage in thwarting any such plan."

"Because all my things are right here," he said slowly, her meaning progressively becoming clear. "I only have one area to defend. And since it's private, I can defend it without having to explain anything to anyone."

She nodded happily, and he looked at the door with new eyes. Carving runes into the door and walls would take far more time than he had if he wanted it all done by tonight, not to mention the runes themselves would take additional time to build up to their full strength. That would have to come later. For now, though, he did have a few options.

Fishing about in his pouch, he pulled out three items. The first was a stick of grey chalk as thick as his thumb; it had started out as a small pack of chalk sticks, but Lash had taught him to grind the sticks into dust and then mix in powdered iron before compressing it back into a stick. Chalk by itself was very poor at holding onto magic, but the iron was a whole different story. He started at the floor and traced half a circle in front of the door, making sure that the frame was inside, and then he sketched a parabola up the wall. Admittedly, he had to hop up and hang on to the top of the frame to complete it, but when he dropped back down to the ground, the shape was uneven but still closed.

The second item was a stylus made of hazel wood, nephilim runes covering the nearer half; this was his newest focus, actually the same one he had been working on when McGonagall came knocking unexpectedly on his door. Wards, Lash had taught him, could be constructed a number of different ways, but they always had to be tied down to something. In a proper house, they could and should be attached to the threshold created from the life and love of a family; for other places, ones where people did not live, runes could be carved onto objects with sentimental value that would 'project' the ward over the property, which made them mobile but weakened them significantly. Or, if someone were really desperate, he could bind the wards to a simple magical circle.

Harry had used a silver wire in his shed to support the runes carved onto the walls, but for tonight a ring of magnetic chalk would have to do.

His needs right now were simple: so long as the wards were active, no one should be able to open the door, and the wood it was made of would need to withstand attempts to break it down once any intruders realized they could not simply unlock it. The runes he needed for that purpose flitted through his mind, and raising his arm, he started scribing those symbols into the air.

"Runes of wind and smoke?" Lash asked quietly, watching him as he worked. "Not as effective as wood and stone, but for your purposes here, a good choice. But why not use the chalk to write out the runes around the circle?"

He smiled a bit at the question. It was just like her to take a real situation and turn it into an opportunity to quiz him on what she had taught him or teach him something new. "Because the runes have to be part of the boundary. It'd be one thing if I had a circle around the entire room; then I could just write the runes on the walls since they would all be in the same plane. With the way I drew this circle, though, I would need the chalk to float in the air. That just isn't going to happen."

"Then why not do just that? Draw the circle around the room. It is not as though you do not have enough chalk," she pointed out.

"Yes, I have plenty of chalk, but these wards are going to be weak already because of the materials I'm using. More iron would mean more energy that could be stored, but with the magic spread over the whole room, the door itself would be less defended than what this will do. I need to maximize the strength of the wards in this particular area, and that means finding the right balance between area and iron content."

"Correct."

Once the runes were all written, their presence revealed by the faintest golden glow drifting in the air, he slipped the stylus back into his pouch and picked up the third item, a cheap penknife he had stolen from Dudley's ever-growing collection of forgotten things. Pricking the tip of his middle finger, he bent down and massaged a single drop of blood from the split skin and let it drip onto the chalk. Any circle-based ward needed some source of magic to prime it, and a drop of his own blood worked better than many other things and was always readily available. He backed up and, after taking a moment to double-check everything, commanded, "_Vtangavor_."

The blood burst into white flame, and then the flame split in two and raced along the circle like a spark down a fuse. When the two flames met, the runes glowed momentarily with golden light before fading from sight. The circle itself flashed, and lines of white ran up and down the door, following the grain of the wood. Not three seconds after speaking the incantation, the visible effects were gone, and only the chalk circle remained as a sign that anything unusual at all had happened.

He grinned, but then he felt her arm wrap around his shoulder from behind. "Lash?"

"Now is the time for us to address the elephant in the room, I think. What the Sorting Hat said."

Slowly he turned around to face her, but before he could say anything, she pressed one finger to his lips. "I have known about your feelings toward me for a while now," she confessed. "It comes part and parcel with inhabiting your mind. I will admit, I tried at first to prevent this from happening – I have never been the 'mothering sort', nor do I wish to be – but I have since accepted it. Since you did not mention it, I felt it best not to bring it up, either. Now I realize that was a mistake."

"Lash, I—"

He had no idea what to say, so perhaps it was a good thing that she cut him off by pulling him into her embrace. "And as for your self-imposed need to do something that will impress me?" He stiffened. "True, you have done nothing that would qualify as such, but I do not care. I see the boy you have become, I can already see the first glimmers of the man you are growing into"—she rested her cheek on the top of his head—"and in either light, there is nothing I can find any fault with. I am _very_ proud of you."

The breath he took in was ragged with tears, and he squeezed his eyes shut as he held on tight to the angel who meant everything to him.

* * *

**Trying to rationalize Dumbledore's actions in book 1 is hard, and making him look halfway decent in the process is even harder. This means that I'm also throwing out basically the entire latter half of "The Prince's Tale" in book 7, where Dumbledore revealed that from the very beginning he **_**knew**_** Voldemort would return (and did nothing to prepare for it), that he **_**knew**_** Harry was a Horcrux (and made sure the connection between Harry and Voldemort would grow stronger over the years), and that he **_**knew**_** Harry would inevitably have to die at Voldemort's hand (and spent the intervening years intentionally molding him into what was in essence a suicide bomber). And people wonder why I say Dumbledore was evil in canon. Instead, here he will be the kind of person he portrayed himself as: an intelligent and intuitive man whose guesses tend to be right more often than not and who generally does strive to do the right thing.**

**If you can't tell, keeping this bizarro version of Dumbledore in character is going to be difficult. You can thank The Mad Mad Reviewer for the fact I'm trying this at all.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	14. Wizarding 101

**js:** I suggest you reread chapter 33 of book 7 again; when Dumbledore himself outright admits that he knew from the beginning that Voldemort would return, that he knew Quirrell was involved in the Philosopher's Stone debacle, that he knew Malfoy would try to assassinate him before the school year had started, and that he intentional protected Harry only so Harry could die at the "right moment", the defense that he made honest mistakes but is really a decent person doesn't hold water. _Dumbledore_ said he was the mastermind behind the series, not us fanfic authors.

**syed, Ozarkus:** I have no clue where you two have gotten the idea that the Potters are a family of potioneers as nothing of the sort is said in the series. Unless you're reading this information off Pottermore, which I don't follow and don't consider canon, anyway. In this story, though, what the Potters before Harry did really won't be important.

**Oh, no. No no no. This chapter is giving me serious flashbacks to **_**Faery Heroes**_**, when a few times it took me three or four chapters to get through a single day. I really wanted to cover Harry's first week in a chapter or two, but it looks like that's not going to happen.**

**Disclaimer:** For all that Transfiguration was a required subject and was taught by an important side character, did any of the spells the trio learned over their six years at Hogwarts have any relevance in the story? If not, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 14  
****Wizardry 101**

"There, look."

"Where?"

"Wearing the glasses."

"Is he really the Boy-Who-Lived?"

"Didn't you see his scar?"

"But why's he in Slytherin?"

Attending Hogwarts, Harry was quickly deciding, was much like being the main attraction at the zoo. The instant he left the safety of his dorm on Monday morning and appeared in the Great Hall for breakfast alongside the rest of the green-trimmed first-years, people were unabashedly watching and whispering about him. They weren't even pretending that they weren't doing it! He felt their eyes on him throughout the meal, even when he did his best to ignore them by burying his nose in the schedule one of the prefects handed to him as the older girl walked up and down the table.

Perhaps if he had been able to hide among the rest of his House, things would not be so bad, but the others seemed determined not to give him that opportunity. The circle of distance they had given him the previous night was back in full force, and while it was no larger than it had been before, it somehow felt even emptier; now no one even attempted to pierce it. Without another person to talk to but too many people around for him to chat with Lash, he quickly finished his meal and waited. He needed answers now, and he currently only knew one person whom he could get them from.

Soon enough, his patience was rewarded. Malfoy stood from the table, Crabbe and Goyle following suit, and started walking to the door. Where they were going from there, Harry had no idea since the Slytherin first-years' had the first period free, but the reason was insignificant. He moved after them, ignoring the way the rest of the House turned to track him. Sleeping on the question of just what they expected or wanted from him had proven unsuccessful, and Lash's own pondering on the subject while he was out had likewise turned up nothing. She had told him that the longer he went without demonstrating or at least discovering what that was, the greater the likelihood that one or more of them would take action against him, but right now they were trying to solve a puzzle with only a few of the pieces. They needed more information.

"Malfoy!" he called out as soon as he left the Great Hall for the corridor leading up to it. The boy seemed to hear his name as he and the two hulking pseudo-bodyguards with him immediately sped up their walk, and Harry rolled his eyes and ran after them. "Wait up! Malfoy!"

"What?!" the blond snapped, finally whirling around to glare at him. "Make it quick, Potter. I don't want to be seen with you."

Harry quirked a disbelieving eyebrow. "You don't want to be seen with me, yet _you_ came to _me_ on the train and said you wanted to introduce me to a bunch of people. You implied that sticking with you would benefit me, but as soon as I get Sorted into Slytherin, you avoid me. Make up your mind."

"I said all that before, yes, but now the situation has changed!" Malfoy hissed. "I didn't know that everyone else would react that badly. If I kept you close to me, I'd be the one to suffer for it. You're a liability now, Potter."

Goyle cracked his knuckles menacingly, but Harry just shot him a flat glare, irritation flaring behind his eyes. "Do you really want to try it?" The bigger boy looked at him in a face of pure confusion, as if he could not understand why Harry, being smaller, had not reacted to the threat with fear, and Harry turned his attention back to Malfoy. "And just why did they all act like that last night? What did they want?"

"I can't believe I have to explain this," the blond muttered half to himself. "You killed the greatest Dark Lord in history when you were a baby. You killed him despite being a Halfblood. Everyone wants to know how. There was a rumor going around, started a couple of years ago, that maybe you survived that night because you were an even greater dark wizard. That maybe the Dark Lord went after you in the first place because he didn't want competition."

"A greater dark wizard," Harry repeated skeptically, "when I was just fifteen months old. Really."

"I didn't say I believed it," Malfoy hastily backpedaled. "I just said some people were thinking it, that's all. Flint and McCullen practically invited you to prove it. If you had done some magic, shown some power, spoken in Parseltongue even, that would have been enough, but you didn't. They lost interest, and now all the rest, the ones who hate you for being a Halfblood who managed to sneak into Slytherin House, will be out to get you and anyone who associates with you."

"So you're just going to turn around and run?" he prodded. It was not a bad plan on the face of it – in Malfoy's shoes, arrayed against a bunch of people older and more practiced than him, he wasn't sure he would not do the same – but what mattered more than retreating was what would happen afterwards. It was one thing to retreat to better arm and prepare himself, but quite another to run just so he could get away from a bunch of bullies and thugs. "Are you that scared of them?"

Malfoy scoffed. "Scared? No. We aren't a bunch of Gryffindors who settle all our arguments with fighting. I'm going to leave you behind because you're toxic, and I'm not going to give up my shot to take control of Slytherin House to spend my time with you. If you can turn this to your advantage and earn some esteem out of it, we can discuss it again, but you need to prove that you're worth sticking my neck out for first." The blond rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "But if you wanted to make friends with Zabini before that, I wouldn't mind seeing him get brought down a little. He's too cocky for his own good."

"I'm not some dog you can order around, Malfoy," Harry spat, anger rising. "And since you just told me that it would look bad for you if I hung around, what makes you think that I would want to be friends with you when I do make it through this?"

"After floundering around like you did last night, you'd need to do a whole lot more than just survive," Malfoy pointed out. "Leaving you out for the wolves isn't personal, Potter. It's just… Unless you can prove to be worth the trouble, you aren't a good investment. That's all."

Harry watched the three go, frustration and indignation warring with confusion. "Lash, tell me you understood that."

"Oh, I did," she said as she stepped out from behind him. She was smiling, but he did not know if it was a good sign or bad. "The intrigue? The backstabbing? Constant maneuvering and setting up others as proxies and cat's paws?" The angel shook her head. "Welcome to the corrupt world of politics."

"So you know how to work something like this?"

Her grin now was all teeth, a vicious expression that somehow looked natural on her face. "Indeed I do. One of my earliest hosts was a man named Sextus Afranius Burrus, who advised Emperor Nero of Rome, and I have been with numerous courtiers and viziers throughout the millennia. Politics is something I have a great deal of experience with."

"But wasn't Nero insane and burned down Rome or something?" Harry asked.

"Yes, he was, and yes, he did, or at least a portion of it. You have to understand that he had Burrus assassinated, and with his dying breath I inflicted Nero with madness in return. He was popular amongst the citizens of Rome at the time," she hastily explained, "and I thought distorting his reason would cause him to be caught in some scandal and allow Gaius Piso, a senator who had always despised Nero and eventually plotted his death, to depose the man. That plan did not work out at all as I intended," concluded Lash in a murmur.

He looked at her, his face a study in reluctance. "And you think that would make me want to take part in politics? Just… What are my options on how to deal with this?"

"The way I see it, you have three paths ahead of you that you may choose among," she said. "First, you become a shark. You learn to play the Slytherins' game, and you play it better than they do. It is the hardest route, but it offers the greatest rewards."

"And the greatest headaches," he pointed out.

"Second, you become a remora. You find something you have or some service you can provide that is of value, and you offer it to a major player in exchange for protection. Safe, easy, but you would have to become the dog you just told Malfoy you are not.

"Third, you become a turtle."

"Lash, I know you like your extended metaphors, but I think it's breaking down now."

She rolled her eyes. "What I mean is that if you amass enough knowledge and power, you would then be capable of ignoring the political games going on around you. You would not have to play them and would also be too powerful to be used as a pawn within them."

Harry nodded. "I like this option more and more."

"But," she added in warning, "choosing this path has a number of downsides. It will take time to grow a hard enough shell that you are untouchable; until that happens, you will have to keep one eye open. If Malfoy's description of how the House operates is correct, you will also cut yourself off from many, even most of your potential allies in Slytherin. An easier solution than the others, perhaps, but I do not think it is the best."

"But you just said that politics are something you can do and enjoy. I already don't like them, and it's only been a few hours." He shook his head and started walking up the stairs, and Lash hopped up to sit on the stair rail and slip upward, unaffected by gravity as she was. "The more I think about it, the more I like the third option. Maybe I'll change my mind later on, but for now—" He cut himself off as he saw a group of three boys walking over to descend the same stairwell he was on, and he found himself smiling. "Dean!"

He had been shocked the previous night when he saw that not only had Sally-Anne joined him here at Hogwarts, but so had Dean, someone else he knew from the nightmare that was their kidnapping. The dark-skinned boy had been closer to the back of the line whereas Harry had been at the front, so it was understandable that he had not seen his old acquaintance until Dean's name had been called. Sadly, like Sally-Anne he was in a different House, but that did not mean they could not make time to catch up on how things had been, and a friendly face could go a long way in making up for the cold shoulder the other Slytherins were giving him.

But then Dean looked over at him with a completely blank expression. "What do you want?"

Harry's eyebrows rose. That was far more aggressive a response than he had expected. Sure, he had teleported back to Surrey after they had gotten off the pirate ship rather than stick around, but Dean really could not have held a grudge against him for that for an entire year, could he? "I just wanted was to say hi, catch up some. That's all."

"Catch up?" he saw Dean mouth, and then the other boy snorted. "Look, Potter, I don't know you. Right now, I don't know that I want to know you. We definitely aren't friends, so don't act like it."

"You had your chance to make friends with us," the redhead at Dean's side said as he crossed his arms. "But you're a Slytherin. Everyone knows that Dark wizards all come from there. You're friends with Malfoy, for Merlin's sake!"

The three stormed past him, and Harry could only watch them go in shocked silence. "Lash, I'm not hallucinating, right? That was the same Dean I met before?"

"I can say definitively that you are not hallucinating. I see through your eyes directly, so any psychiatric issues would not affect me." She rubbed her chin. "And yes, that did indeed look to be the same boy you know."

"Then why did he say he didn't know me?"

"That is a good question, and one I do not have an easy answer to. Perhaps he has simply forgotten the experience?" she offered.

He stared at her. "That was a huge deal. You really think he just forgot it?"

"If he repressed the memory, it is a possibility." Lash grimaced and continued, "But it is not one I think particularly likely. As I said, I do not have a ready answer for you."

Harry rubbed his temples. Already he was feeling confused, and he hadn't even had his first class yet. What in the world was going on?

* * *

Ninety minutes of blindly exploring the castle later, Harry hustled back to the third floor where he had previously found the Charms classroom. It was time to see just how magic was taught here.

Professor Flitwick, the teacher for this course, was a tiny man; he even had to stand on top of a pile of books to see over his desk. He started class by reading off the names of the combined Hufflepuff and Slytherins, and when he reached Harry's, he let out an excited squeak that was far too loud for his size and toppled backwards out of sight.

Harry knew he shouldn't think the wizard's accident to be funny. But it was.

Thankfully, for him as well as all the rest of the giggling students, Flitwick didn't seem to mind that they were laughing at his expense. Finishing up the roll without repeating his earlier clumsiness, he flicked his wand at the chalkboard, and writing appeared instantly. Harry felt his interest growing; new magic always had that effect on him, it seemed. It was certainly how Lash had taken to distracting him time and time again over the year and a half he had known her.

"Welcome to Charms class," Flitwick said in a high-pitched voice. "This is what I personally consider to be the most useful class you will take during your entire time at this school, and I'm not just saying that because I am the teacher. The vast majority of magic you will cast in your daily lives will be charms. Cleaning your rooms? Charms. Fixing something you broke before your parents find out? Charms. Enchanting a gift for that special someone?" He giggled at the awkward expressions the rest of the class gave him. "Oh, that will be more important to you as you grow older, I promise, and yes, also charms. A talent for charms can make your life easy as a dream, and ignoring them will see you work harder for less reward.

"Because it is such an important class, however, we will not jump immediately into spellwork." The class groaned and put away the wands they all pulled out. "I know, I know, it is a disappointment. In this class, we will first cover the basics of magical theory so that you at least have some idea of how we cast our magic rather than just the what and the why. One cannot build a house without first laying down the foundation, after all, and much the same is true in magic."

Not a great surprise, though not something Harry was necessarily happy about. He much preferred the practical aspects of magic, but Lash had been sure to drill the theory into his head. And, if he were being honest, his angel had a way of making the theory lessons interesting enough that even if he wanted to stay bored, he was gradually drawn in. Of course, considering this was going to be the first official lesson the students were going to have, it was assuredly going to be about stuff he already knew, so he probably would not find it that interesting.

And then Flitwick started talking about how flicking a wand left rather than right or putting the accent on the wrong syllable could make spells go horrifically wrong, throwing in a story about a wizard who mispronounced a single letter and rather than cleaning his fireplace caused a buffalo to appear sitting on his chest.

"Okay, what in the world is he talking about?" Harry muttered under his breath several minutes into the lecture.

"It is rather fascinating," Lash commented, apparently ignoring him entirely. "Dual mnemonics. No one in my world did anything like this."

"But why is he talking about all this? It doesn't make any sense."

The blonde woman smiled faintly. "In what way does it not make sense? What facts do you have that stand in conflict what he is telling you?"

"I can cast magic just fine without moving my hand around. Without using a wand, even," he added. He had thought she would be in agreement with him, with what she herself had taught, but she wasn't, and he could not figure out why. "And you said that the actual incantation doesn't matter so long as you associate that sound pattern with the spell—"

"Do not bring up anything I taught you. Use only your logic." He stared blankly at her, so she explained, "I want you to look at this critically and use reason to support your assumption. Your own experiences are acceptable, but treat everything I said as irrelevant unless already proven."

Oh, she was just turning this into another exercise. That explained it. "Well, there's what I already said about how I don't need a wand…" She nodded encouragingly, and after a moment of thinking he came up with something else. "And what about that accidental magic McGonagall talked about? When kids do magic, they don't need a wand, and they don't use incantations. It's all intent and emotion, what they want and how much they want it."

"True. Anything else? Any other examples you can think of to challenge this theory?"

From her tone of voice, there was something specific she was looking for, but what was it? She was an angel who had been studying this for God knew how long; was she thinking about something historical? Something from the first magic humans worked? "If wand motions are important like he says they are, then it follows that wands have to be important, too," he reasoned aloud, still whispering quietly enough not to be overheard. "But if people absolutely need wands to cast spells, how did they first realize they even _had_ magic? There wouldn't be any reason to make wands unless they already knew they were wizards, so therefore magic can't rely on wands, and from there it can't rely on wand motions, either."

"Very good," she praised. "Yes, much like children, the first wizards would not have had wand motions or strict incantations or even wands for their spells. These would come later. Further, think back to the spells you read about in the books you purchased. What do all the incantations have in common?"

He thought for nearly a minute, but finally he shook his head. Whatever she wanted him to come up with eluded him.

She hummed and nodded. "I suppose that was not a fair question. You do not have much of a grounding in linguistics. All the incantations for this world's magic that we have seen so far have been corrupted Greek or Latin; if the incantation itself was important, wizards would have first noted their abilities only after these societies developed. Tell me, do you think the Greeks and Romans were the first peoples to have tales of witches and mages and miracle-workers?"

"Nope. Not a chance."

"Indeed. Stories of people with magic are as old as human civilization itself, and the probability that they stumbled on combinations of sounds that just so happen to match a later actual language is so small as to be all but impossible. More likely, the Romans' magical texts spread through Europe while they were still an empire, and just as Latin was for centuries considered the language of the educated and powerful, their incantations were likewise maintained.

"As for the motions, it is my suspicion that the same is true. I did tell you that an incantation is just a series of phonemes that you associate with a specific effect and that allows you to cast spells only when you wish to do so, and the patterns of wand motions Flitwick is teaching are likely the same thing, simply using the fingers instead of the mouth. After all," she explained to Harry's lost expression, "so much of magic is belief. If these people believe that wands and wand motions and exact pronunciations are necessary, than for them they are. For you…" She trailed off, but what she did not say was obvious.

Deciding to play devil's advocate, he challenged, "Then what about the story Flitwick told about that Baruffio person? How did that happen?"

"First, we are assuming that such an event actually happened rather than it just being a fictional tale intended to hammer in the point he is making. Second, recall that the wand you bought for this school stores emotion and needs intent supplied to it. If Baruffio was going mindlessly through the motions of cleaning and let his mind wander onto the subject of buffalos, it would not be beyond the realm of possibility for him to conjure up such a beast completely by accident."

To keep up appearances, Harry spent the rest of the period making notes, Lash helpfully supplying him with a summary of what Flitwick had said while they were talking, but his mind was not in it beyond what was necessary to make sure he did not leak ink all over the page with the quill he was still learning how to use correctly. Instead, he found his eyes drifting over to Sally-Anne, who sat next to Hannah and Susan. Dean did not recognize him, but did she? The chances that she had forgotten the experience they had shared were tiny; Dean was stuck in his cage for most of that day, but Sally-Anne had been in the pirates' grasp for three. There was no way she could have forgotten about it.

Soon enough, the bell signaling the end of class rang, and Harry absently jotted down the topic of the essay Flitwick assigned them to be completed by their next class on Thursday before he headed out the door. "Hey," he said as he caught up to the three girls. Hannah and Susan gave him smiles that held just a bit of tension, and Sally-Anne… yes, that was a flash of recognition that crossed her face. That was one question answered, though it left several others open. "How are you enjoying Hufflepuff?"

"It's great, just like my parents always said it would be. I wouldn't trade it for being in any other House." Hannah's smile was a bit more natural this time, but it faded a bit when she asked, "What about you? How has Slytherin been so far?"

He waggled his hand. "It'll take some getting used to, but I'll survive. And Sally-Anne, it's been a while," he said with a slightly forced grin. "I didn't know you were coming to Hogwarts, too."

"Wait. You two know each other?" demanded Susan.

The anxious blonde paled at the redhead's question. _What is she afraid off?_, Harry wondered. "Not well, but we have met before, a little over a year ago. It was short but… memorable."

"I-I-I can't talk about it," Sally-Anne stammered.

"It was terrible, I know," he said with a frown, "but it's over now. You don't have to worry about it anymore." And yes, he fully realized the irony of that advice considering the memory of the slavers still haunted him at times, but maybe it would bring her some comfort where it did not for him.

Apparently not, though; the girl just looked even more scared. No, not scared, he decided as her eyes grew so wide that the whites were clearly visible, absolutely terrified. "N-No. J-J-Just stop. Don't talk to me."

"Sally-Anne, I—"

"Go away!"

"Leave her alone!" Hannah snapped, shifting between the two and glaring heatedly at him. Behind her, Susan pulled Sally-Anne close and muttered into her ear, though the redhead still shot her own glare at him. "Can't you see you're scaring her?!"

Harry immediately took a step back and held up his hands in front of his chest. "I wasn't trying to! I just wanted to talk."

"Well, she doesn't want to talk to you. Stay away from her." The three Hufflepuffs walked away, the two he thought were going to be friends sending wary glances every few steps. He just stood there, wondering when everything had shifted so strangely.

Phantom hands settled on his shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze. "I think some of this might be my fault," Lash admitted in a reluctant voice. "I expected the Houses would be insular, but I did not realize there was a widespread prejudice against Slytherin specifically. If I did, I would have suggested you tell the Hat you wanted to go somewhere else."

"You're good at catching all those little details," he said with a shake of his head. "If you didn't pick that up, it's because you couldn't. This isn't your fault."

"Be that as it may, I still feel some responsibility for your present situation."

Changing the subject entirely, he said, "I just wish I knew what was going on. Dean doesn't remember me at all, but not only does Sally-Anne remember just fine, she's scared out of her mind. She wasn't this frightened when we were actually on the ship, for crying out loud."

"Perhaps she has some lingering trauma of her own, just as you do," suggested Lash, "but I think you are correct. This is all a little too suspicious for my tastes."

* * *

Lunch passed quickly and quietly, the silent stares of the rest of the House putting him on edge, and he was the first one to enter the Transfiguration classroom. His haste was not just due to escaping the judging looks of the rest of the Slytherins, though. Transfiguration was something he had not already learned about from Lash, and that made it very interesting.

"Did you have magic like this in your world?" he asked softly as he pulled out quill, ink bottle, and the folder his angel had suggested she use to contain all his loose sheets of parchment, the noise hiding his voice from McGonagall where she sat at the front of the room.

A chair scraped across the floor to his right, and he had to choke down his laughter when he glanced over. Lash was sitting in a desk just like his, the same writing materials in front of her, but she had eschewed the robe he had to wear for a white shirt, short tie, and plaid skirt, the picture of a Catholic schoolgirl finished off with a slim pair of glasses perched on her nose. He supposed he should be glad she had gone for silly rather than sexy; if nothing else, a smile was easier to explain away than an expression of disturbed disgust.

She gave him a wide grin, fully aware of his amusement at her outfit. "We did, but not to this extent. Nowhere close, honestly. The mortals had societal mores against transforming living creatures or turning something inanimate into a living thing, and rarely did wizards encounter any situations where transfiguration would offer a solution that could not be solved just as easily by some other method. The fae used transformations much more extensively, but their spells were also, at least to my knowledge, permanent. I do not know if humans could even learn to cast those particular spells.

"This class should be as educational for me as it is for you."

The Ravenclaws filed in alongside the rest of the Slytherins, and everyone had found a seat by the time the bell rang. The door shut solidly on top of the last of the echoes.

"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," McGonagall told them. "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

What followed was a lecture on innate identities and transition states and integrity degradation, and several times throughout Harry looked around surreptitiously to make sure he was not the only one who was totally lost. He would have to ask Lash to explain it all to him again later. What McGonagall was talking about could not have been too important, however, because an hour later she moved on to teaching them an incantation and passing out matchsticks they were supposed to turn into needles.

Staring down at the needle in front of him for a moment, he peered out the corner of his eye to where Lash was floating her own matchstick in front of her face and changing it back and forth with each blink. He whispered from the side of his mouth, "I thought you said it takes time to learn a new spell. That you need to convince your subconscious that it's possible."

"I did." She fluttered her eyelashes, and the matchstick-needle blurred between forms. Apparently deciding that he did not find her play as funny she wanted, she dismissed the illusion and turned to face him fully. "And if you look, no one has managed it so far. As with most of the rules of evocation I know, that is the same between my world and this one."

He shrugged, looking back down at his needle. Even if he didn't succeed, it would not hurt to give it a try. He just hoped his confusion on the theory would not come back to bite him. Pointing his wand at the matchstick – he already knew he did not believe in the wand motions, so aping them was pointless as far as he was concerned – he breathed, "_Acusaccendio_."

Nothing happened, so he repeated the spell, and again, and again, each time picturing just how the transformation was meant to happen and tapping into his frustration to supplement the emotion that should have been coming from his wand. After the eighth or ninth time, he finally spotted a change: the wood changed from brown to silvery, and now it reflected a little light. A grin replaced his scowl, and trying the spell again made the head flatten out, but he was caught off-guard when that change reversed as soon as he stopped concentrating.

Footsteps sounded from behind him, and his metallic match switched back to wood. "As you just saw, it is harder to finish a transfiguration from a transition state than it is to undo the spell and try it again," McGonagall told him. The expression on her face was strange when he looked up; it was almost as if she could not decide whether to smile or frown and instead had tried to do both at once. "You are nearly there, though. Try making your wand motions bigger. Small motions are harder to do cleanly."

Keeping his wand still, he repeated the incantation. This time the matchstick changed to a greater degree, now looking like a normal needle except for the wood grain pattern and the blunted point. He looked back up at the black-haired woman and smiled. "You're right, that was much easier than last time."

McGonagall may as well have been sucking on a slice of lemon with the way her mouth was puckered. "Just continue practicing," she bit out before stalking away.

"I respond to her huffiness in kind, and she acts insulted. I try to be nice, and she acts insulted. There just is no pleasing that woman."

"I think her current attitude has more to do with the fact that you did not perform the spell as she taught," Lash said in response to his muttered complaint. "Also, recall that you did not make the best first impression. I know, I know," she added before he could say anything, "you were not impressed with her, either. I simply think your last interaction is playing a role here, too."

A pass of his left hand and a muttered "_Krtsel"_, and the mostly-needle changed back yet again. "Doesn't matter much, then, does it? _Acusaccendio_." A burst of determination to compensate for the fact that he was using his left hand rather than his wand, and this time he picked up a needle that he would not guess was not real had he not been the one to transfigure it. "We can't go back and remake our impressions of each other."

"Not easily or safely, at least." He glanced up at Lash in surprise, but she shook her head. "Just because there is a way to do something does not mean it should be done, if it even can be done in this world. I am willing to teach you whatever you wish to know, but this you will not learn until you are older, wiser, and much more experienced. I will not allow you to risk dashing your existence against the rapids of time out of youthful recklessness."

The melancholy that fell over them after that turn of the conversation lasted to the fourth period of the day, at which point Harry's low mood turned to worry. The Gryffindors he would be sharing History of Magic with did not look happy; specifically, they did not look happy with him. Most of the red-trimmed students had immediately focused on him, and their expressions ranged from anger to suspicion to betrayal, though the last made no sense whatsoever. He had not been at Hogwarts for even twenty-four hours yet, so what could he have possibly done to earn such looks?

"Why do they look like they just watched you kick their puppies into the middle of the road?" Lash asked in a falsely bright tone, one that was probably intended to make her sound like she was not as worried about what was going on as he knew she really was. "It is a good thing I am not human, else I believe I would be too busy keeping an eye on all the people who apparently wish you grievous bodily harm to get anything else done."

"Like you have anything else to do anyway," he shot back.

If there was any question in his mind about just how the Slytherins were going to react to being forced to choose between protecting a Housemate or continuing their grudge against him, the seating arrangement answered it. The two Houses split the room between them, Gryffindors on the left and Slytherins on the right, and Harry found himself in a seat right in the middle of the space with the rest of his supposed 'family' pointedly ignoring him.

Before the cramped room could erupt into insults or, worse, violence, a tired-looking ghost slipped through the chalkboard at the front of the room. "I am Professor Binns, your History teacher," the ghost said in a flat drone. "Let us begin your education on the history of our world with an introduction into some of the major wizards of the last few centuries…"

After several minutes of listening to the ghost's monotonous voice, Harry was startled out of his half-stupor when all the sound in the room abruptly cut out. "You will find this class easy," Lash told him with a smile. "I have been comparing his lecture to the history book you were supposed to purchase, and I am now certain that he is quoting the material verbatim."

"So what—" He cut himself off as he realized that he could still hear his own whispers just fine. "How…?"

"You know full well that the 'me' you interact with on a daily basis is just an illusion," she reminded him. "I have been manipulating your senses ever since you picked up my coin. Obviously if I can cause you to hear my voice when it is not really there, I can influence your hearing so that our voices are all you hear."

He blinked and flushed in embarrassment. Sometimes it was hard to remember just what she could do in his head, but in his defense, he could count the number of times she had ever really done something this extensive with her illusions on one hand. "Oh. Right. So this will be a wasted period is what you're saying?"

"Not necessarily wasted. After all, you have your parchment, you have your assignments…" A book appeared in the corner of his vision, and he quickly noticed that not only was it one of the theory books he had purchased at Flourish and Blotts, it was even open to the section he would need to reference for Flitwick's essay "…and you have your textbooks. Work on your assignments here, and that is less time you will need to spend doing them later."

"Thanks, Lash." She beamed at that and nodded regally. Looking over at the page, he found his eyes drawn over it to Dean, who had braced his head on his hands and was staring slack-jawed at the front of the room. "You know, I just had a thought. Malfoy said that he refused to be seen with me because it would make him look bad in front of the rest of the House. Do you think that could be why Dean said he didn't know me? He didn't want to get in trouble with the other Gryffindors? It isn't like they like me any more than the Slytherins do."

"It is a possibility, even a likely one," Lash agreed. "What does your intuition tell you?"

He grimaced. He had actually been hoping she would just say that was it and put his own concerns to rest. "It's nice and clean, but it sounds too simple. I didn't see any recognition on him at all, and it doesn't explain why Sally-Anne was so scared. Not unless he threatened her to keep her quiet, and that wouldn't make sense unless he actually disliked me, not that he was just protecting his own skin."

"The simplest answer is generally the correct one," she said, "but generally is not always, and even a simple answer needs to account for all the information it is trying to explain. So we are back at our original conclusion: Dean legitimately does not recall that experience, and something related to the reason why terrified Sally-Anne more than her imprisonment itself."

"And we don't know what."

"Not yet, but that does not mean we will never know." She was silent for a moment. "Not to belabor the obvious, but right now we have only the single lead."

"It's getting her to talk that will be the problem. Getting to her, too, if Hannah and Susan's attitudes today are anything to go by," Harry added unhappily. And he had thought that he had finally made a couple of human friends, too.

"Perhaps not that much of a problem," she softly countered.

The illusion of his textbook went ignored as they hashed out the bare bones of their plan.

* * *

The gloom of night had fallen over the castle, and as of half an hour previously, all students were meant to be in their dorms attempting to sleep. It meant no one was in the library to see the door open and close all on its own.

Harry let his veil fade and created a cone of light that shined from his right hand. His eyes grew large as he looked at all the shelves filling the cavernous space. "That's… a lot of books."

"Indeed it is," came Lash's approving comment. "In this room are probably the answers to nearly any question about this world's magic you might have."

"And you expect to read all this?"

"If we assume it will take an average of two minutes for you to look through each book thoroughly enough for me to recall all the text and you spend an hour a day finding books for me, that would be thirty books per day. Should you stay in the castle for Christmas and Easter holidays… let us say 290 days per year that you will have access to this library. That translates to 8,700 books per year, and just under 61,000 books over the entirety of your education here."

That was a lot of books, too. Maybe she could do it, after all.

"This room appears to be the same size as several university libraries that I have seen, which contain around two million books and periodicals on average."

Or not. "You're barely going to make a dent in that."

"If you spent more than one hour on weekends or holidays, I could get farther, or if students are allowed access during the summer months," she said with a shrug. "But no, at best I will only be able to read a substantial fraction of the texts here. Start over there."

He followed her finger and walked over to the shelves at the far side of the room; he could not make out the names, but it was no surprise when they all seemed to be about magical theory. Pulling down a thick tome entitled _Arithmancy and Imagination: An introduction to the mathematical underpinnings of magic_, he started flipping the pages, stopping only long enough to be sure he could clearly see the entirety of both pages before he moved on to the next. "When are you even going to find the time to read thirty books a day?" he asked. "I mean, it's one thing to remember the pages, but actually taking the words in is something else entirely, and knowing you, you'll want to compare all the books to each other."

"While you are asleep. During meals. When you perform your ablutions. While you do homework." She shrugged. "Basically any time you do not need to speak with me."

Harry could not hold back his smile as something occurred to him. While she had spent a lot of time teaching him ever since he picked up her coin, their tutoring sessions did not cover even a majority of the day. "You've been incredibly bored over the last year and a half, haven't you?" A disgruntled expression spread over his face, and the stacks echoes with his laughter.

"You have no idea."

* * *

**Much like **_**Faery Heroes**_**, this story looks like it's going to include a bunch of commentary on canon in addition to plot. Whether this is good or bad is up for debate.**

**I've always found it funny that Flitwick is all "Welcome to Charms. It's going to take two months before I trust you kids to use your wands without poking your own eyes out" while McGonagall tells them "What you are about to see is extremely dangerous and should not be done except under expert supervision. Now go ahead and give it a whirl". I mean, I understand the pacing as it relates to the plot, but in terms of internal logic it's all screwy.**

**And Harry, why are you failing all your social checks? Just why?**

**Silently Watches out.**


	15. The Potions Master

**Guest #4:** Rather than assuming "bad things happen, fun for all", a discerning reader instead would think _'Hey, bad things are happening for reasons I don't know. Maybe there's more going on than I'm aware of'_. Similarly, if you don't understand why a character is acting a certain way, perhaps you should reread the chapters in question in case, I don't know, the explanations are explicitly stated in the story. In the case of your complaint that "Harry is a complete jerk", they are. And I'd _love_ to know just what overused clichés you think I'm "throwing in willy nilly".

**Disclaimer:** For all that Fluffy was a major plot point in book 1, did three-headed dogs get any mention in _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_? If not, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 15  
****The Potions Master**

"I could get used to this," Harry told Lash as he walked into the library following his hasty breakfast on Tuesday. Once again, he had a late morning, but this time he had the entire morning to do whatever he wished until lunch, immediately after which the first-year Slytherins had their second session of Herbology with the Ravenclaws. Now was the perfect time to handle the essays Flitwick, McGonagall, and Sprout had assigned, especially since Lash had told him she had a special lesson she wanted to teach him this weekend.

He was not at all sure this lesson was not just a consolation for it looking less and less likely that he would make any friends this year, but he would accept it, anyway.

Madam Pince, the pinch-faced librarian, looked up at him with a glare when she realized he had entered her domain, but after a moment to look him up and down she turned away and continued reading whatever it was in her hands. A quick push to the tips of his toes revealed that she had been looking through a wizarding newspaper, more specifically the _Daily Prophet_, and Harry scowled. He was currently not happy with that publication, mostly because they had taken it upon themselves to write an article about his Sorting into Slytherin as though it was a matter of earth-shaking significance. He knew he was a celebrity, and thanks to Aunt Petunia's unhealthy interest in them, he was aware that everything he did was therefore considered public information and suitable for scrutiny by everybody in the country. That didn't mean he had to like it.

"Three hours to complete three essays," Lash agreed, probably to distract him from his current irritation. "And if you happen to finish early, I would not mind it too much if you spent a little while finding more books for me."

His eyebrows rose in surprise while he set his bag on the floor. "You want new books already? We flipped through thirty of them last night. Shouldn't that be enough to occupy you for a while?"

A loud thump answered his question as twelve books appeared in midair and dropped onto the table next to his back in three stacks, and she pulled out the other chair at the table and sat down, yet another thick tome in her hands. "I read those while you were sleeping. I have read most of this one since you sat down for breakfast. The widths are deceptive; none of these books use the same font size, and the formulae they discussed took up far more room on the page than I think was necessary. I could probably read thirty-five or forty books a day rather than thirty if this is the case for all of them," she said with a shrug.

Harry shook his head. That was, what, another ten or twenty thousand books over seven years? "You really want to read the entire library, don't you?"

"Of course I do, even though I know that is likely impossible. It is still a good goal to have." She waved one hand airily in his direction, her eyes planted on the pages before her. "Do your homework first. There will be plenty of time for you to see to my needs once that is finished."

"You make it sound like that's all I'm good for," he grumbled jokingly. Deciding to finish the Charms essay first, mostly because he had already written a decent portion of it the previous night before the rest of his Housemate's glares drove him to his dorm where he and Lash could continue figuring out how to handle the Dean and Sally-Anne problem, he barely managed to write three sentences before he had another question. "How are you enjoying Hogwarts so far? I mean, I know it's just been a day, but…"

"As you say, it has only been a single day. I do not have enough information to say one way or another." He looked up at her, and after several moments she sighed and put her book down. "You realize you do need to finish that homework sooner or later, right?"

"Right, sorry."

Forcing himself to focus on the essay, he spent half an hour looking up the rest of the information on the extraordinarily dense magical theorem Flitwick wanted them to discuss rather than talk with Lash, something he considered a much more interesting and enjoyable use of his time. He had just finished blowing the ink dry when his angel chose to continue her previous thought. "My early impressions of the school, however, are mostly positive. The three living professors you have had classes with so far all come across as intelligent and interested in their subjects, and aside from your lack of rapport with McGonagall, they seem to be professional. Binns obviously is not as impressive, but I have never found ghosts to be all that engaging in the first place. If this is how all your teachers behave, there should be no reason you cannot learn from them."

"Even with the differences between how they do magic and how I do it?" he asked.

"Rather than stress the differences, keep in mind that they manipulate the same force you do, and while you have learned a great deal from me, they still know more about magic than you do. Learn what they have to teach you, and then you can adapt that information to your particular methods. Besides," she said with a twinkle in her eyes, "you realize that there will almost certainly be exams during your course of study, yes? If they ask you a question about the wand motion for such-and-such a spell, I doubt they will let you get away with telling them that you do not know it because you have no need of it, even if you can demonstrate the truth of that statement."

He sighed. "So I have to memorize a bunch of useless information. Great."

"Knowledge is never useless, Harry. I would have thought that after a year, you would know that by now," Lash chided. "What if you decide to tutor a fellow student in one of these subjects, but you cannot recall how the professor said how to do it because you do something else? This other individual would believe that magic needs both an incantation and a motion, and while you can show them that you do not, they will still have that belief that needs to be met."

"You're assuming I'll find anyone who'll be willing to be my friend long enough to ask me how to do something," he grumbled. Rather than face her softening expression, he shoved his completed essay into the folder he had set aside for holding his finished assignments and pulled out sheet of unmarked parchment and his copy of _A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration_. Unfortunately, she was still watching him with the same visage when he looked up again. "It's not a big deal. Forget I said anything."

Lash's chair slid around the table to stop next to his, and she reached over to pull him into a short embrace with one arm. "One day. That is all the time you have spent here. I am certain you will find friends in short order."

"Really?" he bit out unhappily. "That's what I thought about Hannah and Susan, and look how they acted. They were suspicious of me as soon as I walked up to them wearing these robes, and then they thought I was intentionally scaring Sally-Anne."

"So it will take people a little time to get over their initial assumptions," Lash replied in a voice that sounded forcibly bright. "That is fine. In fact, this might even be for the best. Those who come to you first will be those who care the least about reputation. They will be the ones who will be least likely to abandon you."

"And how long should I wait for them to show up? A week? A month? Should I grab the first person willing to throw me a bone and—"

The one-armed hug tightened until it was almost painful. "There is no need to work yourself into a frenzy," she said, her soft, sad voice a distinct counterpoint to the strength of her embrace. Not punishing, just concerned. "Nor should you be so pessimistic. Thirty-nine people in your year alone; surely one of them is capable of looking past the color of your robes. Give it time."

* * *

Even with his footsteps silenced and his veil intact, Harry carefully peered around every corner and halted mid-step as he made his way slowly to the third floor. The _tock_ of the clocks echoed strangely in the deserted corridors, and the torches, burning low in respect of the night, were just bright enough for him to ghost along from one puddle of light to the next.

"Why are you doing this?" Lash asked, her exasperation coming through clearly. "Honestly, Harry. What good does this do you? I, at least, seem to recall someone saying that entering this corridor would lead to… What was it, again? _'A very painful death'_, I believe? What benefit does braving this do you?"

He sighed and tried very hard not to roll his eyes. "There is one big reason I'm doing this."

"Oh?" she said when he did not immediately elaborate. "I am all ears."

"What's worse than the danger you know? The danger you don't." Shaking his head, he continued, "I just want to know what this thing that's so dangerous is. Once we know, we can figure out how to deal with it should it be taken out of here. And really, who puts something that dangerous in a school of all places? All it takes is one person getting lost, and suddenly an innocent bystander is suffering that very painful death."

Lash groaned. "Perhaps you should have gone into Gryffindor House. They are described as reckless, yes? This certainly qualifies."

"One peek. That's all I need."

"I would much rather you put your time to better use. Teaching yourself Defense Against the Dark Arts, perhaps?"

He grimaced at that reminder. For all Lash's optimism that morning, his first experience with Defense had been less than impressive. The professor for that class, a thin stick of a man named Quirrell, had a terrible stutter and, worse, seemed terrified of his own subject, both of which translated to a rather lackluster ninety minutes. It was even more disappointing since Harry had read through much of the _Curses and Counter-Curses_ book he bought in Diagon Alley over the summer and found the sheer variety of spells that could be used in combat utterly fascinating.

In front of him now was a simple door, no different than many others in the castle, and Harry had to wonder what the point of warning the school of the danger's presence was. Where he stood was out of the way of the normal flow of school traffic, and there was nothing obviously remarkable about this particular area that would draw curious eyes. With a shrug, he reached forward and pulled on the door.

It didn't budge.

Well, he had not come this far just to be stopped by a locked door. "_Bats'vel_," he whispered, his right hand pointed at the handle, and a soft click echoed in the silence. Another tug, this one swinging the door toward him, and he stuck his head inside to see what he could see.

A blast of fetid wind smacked into him, and he choked and gagged at the smell of rot before his sight adjusted to the gloom. At that point, what his nose was telling him took a very distant second place. Luminous orange eyes, each big as his torso, stared at him, and his head leaned backward as the enormous head rose up and up and up. A mouth that could have swallowed the Dursleys' car whole parted to allow a stream of drool to splash onto the floor. This creature had just passed the amorak as the scariest canine he had ever encountered.

Worse, it wasn't alone. Two more of the beasts pushed forward, each trying to see and smell him. A faint whine escaped his lips as he realized his mistake. There weren't three of these monsters, just one. Just one… giant dog… with three heads. Their shared chest swelled as it took a deep breath, and Harry was already slamming the door shut again when they let loose a wall-rattling roar.

His knees turning to jelly, he pressed his back against the wall and slid down against the stones until he sat on the ground. "That… That was…"

"Yes," Lash breathed from where she sat next to him.

Forcing a weak, shaking smile, he tried to joke, "I thought Cerberus was supposed to guard the road to the Greek Underworld."

"He does."

"He… does?" All humor gone, he turned to stare at the angel. "And was that really…?"

"Yes, Harry. Yes, it was."

"Oh." They sat in silence for another minute before Harry spoke again. "Well, then. My curiosity is satisfied. Now let's never come here again."

* * *

Wednesday dawned bright and clear, and Harry was actually in a good mood when he arrived at the Great Hall for breakfast. For all that his bit of exploration the previous night had been absolutely terrifying, today would be his first Potions class, and that was reason enough for excitement. Potions was a subject that both he and Lash had found incredibly interesting while perusing his textbooks that summer; it and transfiguration were fields of study she said the wizards in this world were far more advanced in than those of her old reality. Compared to the highly metaphoric method she was used to, the almost chemical nature of potion-brewing he would learn here was logical, reproducible, and actually rather scientific.

Honestly, from the ten minutes of raving Lash had gone into back when they were still at Privet Drive, Harry suspected she might be looking forward to this class more than he was.

And if things were not already looking up, he had listened in to some older students in the common room, and it sounded like Snape, the Potions professor and head of Slytherin, tended to favor the students in his House somewhat. If there was any teacher he needed to make a good first impression on, it was this one, and maybe doing so would be enough to calm the aggression he had seen starting to bubble beneath the other Slytherins' blanks expressions.

Mail at Hogwarts was carried by owls, just as his Hogwarts letter had implied, and while he had seen the hundreds of owls find their owners and drop off their packages and letters twice already, he had yet to receive anything. That was to be expected; the only wizards he knew were here at the school, too, and if the Veela wanted to send him anything, it would be by dove rather than owl.

So it came as a total surprise when a large brown owl landed in front of him, dropped a letter into his bowl of porridge, and took off.

"Was that totally necessary?" he muttered, pulling the envelope out and letting his breakfast drip off. A sharp tug broke the wax seal on the back and let him remove the actual letter. What it said, however, caught him completely off-guard.

You arE a wicKed BOy. YoUre pareNts wOuLD Be aSHamEd  
of YOu. you NeveR sHOuld hAvE come bacK

One blink, then two. What in the world was this? Harry had heard of sending letters that were made by cutting letters out of a magazine and pasting them onto paper, but he was pretty sure serial killers were the only ones who were supposed to do that, and they generally taunted the police, not eleven-year-olds. "Who sent this?"

"I do not know the who, but I suspect I know the why," Lash told him in a serious voice. "Do you recognize the style of the letters?" He shook his head. "It is the same font the _Daily Prophet_ uses."

He sighed and let his head hang. "I'm getting hate mail because people don't like what House I got Sorted into. Great." Another letter chose that moment to bounce off his skull.

Barely had he opened the second letter before a third fell on his plate, then a fourth. Most of the rest of the letters were handwritten, but while the words were different, they all carried the same sentiment. _'How could you let us all down like this?'_ read one, and another, _'If your parents knew you would betray them like this, they wouldn't have died for you'_. _'You aren't a hero'_ and _'You're a terrible boy'_ and _'We would be better off without you'_ all featured prominently, as well, and setting yet another vitriolic message down only to see that the envelopes had again multiplied while he was not looking, his astonishment continued burning away to anger. Who were these people, why did they care about something so insignificant in his life, and where the _hell_ had they gotten the idea that he owed any one of them a single… damn… thing?!

Grabbing a short stack of letters, he ripped these down the middle. Goop, yellowish-green in color and smelling of petrol, gushed out in response, the liquid splashing over his hands and forearms. As soon as the fluid touched his skin it started to burn like fire, and desperately he tried to shake it off. All that did was launch the stuff all over the table and onto his cheeks and neck.

The pain redoubled, forcing tears out of his eyes, and already his skin was starting to swell. Huge yellow boils sprung up everywhere, only adding to the size of his hands. He could barely move his fingers from the pain, and they were so thickly covered in sores that they now looked like some kind of demented balloons. His face, too, was swelling, the weeping lumps leaving him with only a tiny bit of central vision.

And as if things were not bad enough already, his ears easily picked up the snickering of his supposed _family_.

"Lash, help," he mumbled, standing as best he could without touching anything with his hands lest he just make the pain worse.

"Here, give me control." He retreated readily to allow his guardian angel to take over his body, and as if in reward the terrible burning was instantly replaced with a gentle coolness. "That is all I can do," she told him as they stumbled toward the tall doorway. "Healing magics were never something I spent any special effort on, and without knowing what that was, I am loath to attempt anything."

"Sure you don't want to take some of your post with you?" Theodore Nott, one of the boys in his year, taunted. "Give you something to do in the hospital wing!"

"But this I can do something about," she added darkly. Harry felt more magic wrap around him, and his cheeks quirked in a smile as whatever trick Lash had just pulled went into effect. Nott's laughter died off as several scarlet envelopes, clearly meant for Harry, instead landed in his lap.

The explosion of sound behind him provided a nice counterpoint as Harry left the Hall, and though he stumbled when control of his body returned to him, he immediately searched the walls for a portrait. It had come as a surprise to him to discover that the people in the paintings could actually talk, but right now that could work to his advantage. "Miss!" he yelled when he spotted one, a woman in a red dress. "Where is the nurse's office?!"

Looking down at him, he could just barely see her haughty expression melt into sympathy. "Oh, you poor dear. What happened to you?"

"I don't know," he said, wincing as the pain started breaking through the numbing spell Lash had applied and growing greater than it first had been. "Please help. It really hurts."

"You come right with me, dearie. I'll lead you there." The witch shook her head and walked behind the edge of her portrait only to reappear in another a short distance farther down the hall. "Absolutely horrid that they would let something like this happen to such a sweet little boy like you. Terrible, I say. What kind of pranks are they allowing around here now? Why, back in my day…"

Harry tuned out the woman's nattering, although her constant stream of words did give him something to navigate by when she walked out of sight. Up, up, up the stairs he climbed, then down a hallway on the fourth floor. "…And I told Peggy that it was a foolish idea, but did she believe me? No, of course not. She thinks that just because she gets to guard the Gryffindor common room, she gets special privileges, but then I told her I heard Mrs. Epcot telling Mr. Ripley about the time Libby Spriggs heard that Dawn— Oh, we're here." And not a moment too soon. Kneeling down, the portrait said, "Just go in there and let Madam Pomfrey take care of you. If you ever need help again, you just find one of us, and if they don't want to listen, you tell them you're friends with Violet, all right? I'll set them straight. Now you go and get cleaned up."

When he pushed the door to the infirmary open with his back, it quickly became obvious that word had gotten here ahead of him. The white-haired nurse bustled up to him and escorted him to the nearest bed. "Undiluted bubotuber pus," she said with a disgruntled shake of her head. "Awful stuff. When it gets processed, it's useful for all sorts of skin-care potions, but in raw form? How did you even come in contact with it?"

"It was in a letter someone sent me— What is all that stuff for?" he asked timidly as he watched her reach in a drawer and pull out a tray of scalpels and cloths. "I thought you'd use… magic or something to fix this."

"I wish I could, child, but boils from bubotuber pus don't take well to magical healing. Makes them fill up even more. Instead, we have to do this the old-fashioned way."

The _'old-fashioned way'_ apparently involved popping each sore individually and draining out the foul-smelling fluid contained within, and Harry had so many boils that he was extremely glad he did not have to worry about making it to class that first period. It took over an hour for all the sores to be incised – Madam Pomfrey had been very cautious about how she went about dealing with those on his face and neck, which he was quite thankful for despite the delay it entailed – and then she soaked strips of gauze in an orange ointment that smelled like peppermint and grape. "You'll need to keep these on for the rest of the day," she told him as she wrapped his hands up. "They will keep the boils from filling up again, and this potion will also prevent any scarring at the same time. You should be completely fine by this time tomorrow, though."

He glanced down at the bandages that made his limbs only a little smaller than they had been while swollen from the pus. This would make classes interesting, though thankfully he only had to worry about Potions and Astronomy at eleven that night. He cursed in his head; so much for making a great first impression on Snape with hands he could barely move.

On the other hand, all the professors so far had been professional and understanding, Harry told himself as he left the hospital wing. Surely Snape would be, too, right?

* * *

"Ah, yes. Harry Potter. Our new… _celebrity_."

Or maybe not.

Harry met Snape's eyes and barely held back a grimace. The man's gaze was cold and dark, empty of warmth of any kind. All they held when staring back at him was an icy hatred.

"That is one of the worse introductions I have seen in my many years," Lash said once Snape returned to the roll he had been working down. "What could he possibly hold against you? His dislike seems extraordinarily personal."

"That makes no sense. I've never met him before now," he whispered back.

Snape made quick work finishing the roll call and looked over the assembled first-year Slytherins and Gryffindors. "You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art that is potion-making," he whispered, his soft voice echoing about his dungeon classroom and undisturbed by any other noise. The rest of the class stared back at him in a mixture of amazement and terror. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses. I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, even stopper death…"

Harry found himself leaning forward slightly as the professor trailed off.

"…if you aren't as big a group of dunderheads as I usually have to teach."

No one really knew what to make of that conclusion, but it hardly mattered since Snape immediately swept between the tables, his black robes billowing behind him. "Weasley, what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?" he barked.

"Uh," the same redheaded boy who had been walking with Dean on Monday morning said. "I don't know?"

Snape's lips curled in a sneer. "Not here for a week, and you're already disappointing." Weasley flushed up to his ears, but despite the look of anger on his face, he bent his head down and glared at the table. "For your information, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death. A potion that I expect will lay permanently beyond your talents. Perhaps someone else has some knowledge of potioneering. Malfoy, where would you look if I told you to find me a bezoar?"

"The stomach of a goat, sir."

One of the Gryffindor girls slowly lowered her hand. "Correct," Snape said, "a point for Slytherin. Potter, your turn. What is the difference between monkshood and wolfsbane?"

Beside him, his angel laid a hand on his shoulder. "None."

"None, professor."

A twitch of his eyebrows told Harry that he had not said what Snape wanted to hear. "If you are going to give an answer, Potter, I expect it to be complete. They are both alternate names for aconite. Should you give me a pitiful partial answer on an exam, I will count it as wrong. There is no value in 'mostly right' in Potions."

"Clearly this mortal never learned that respect must be earned," Lash commented in an acid tone, her expression half disgusted and half dismissive. "Such a tiny, pathetic individual. A bully who revels in the power he has over mere children."

"In your books, on page eight, you will find a recipe for a potion to cure boils," Snape was saying, unaware of the judgement right that moment being passed down upon him by a member of the Heavenly Host. "This should be a simple enough task in the hands of even the least capable wizard. We will see how you fare. Begin."

Harry looked at his cauldron, then the textbook and potions kit he had painfully pulled out of his bag, and then his heavily bandaged hands. How in the world was this going to work?

Badly, it turned out. He had gotten practice at brewing just the previous month, and really was not too bad at it, but that had been when he had full use of both hands. Today he had to pick out the individual ingredients by pinching them between both index fingers because his fingers were held all but immobile by the cloth, and figuring out how to use the knife he needed to chop things with had been an interesting experience in trial and error. He was quite grateful this particular recipe only called for chopping rather than the peeling and straining and skinning he had spotted in others, but he was still only halfway through the process – far behind his neighbors, he could tell – when a violent hiss filled the room. Over on the Gryffindor side of the lab, one boy's cauldron twisted and collapsed into a blob of pewter, and rose-pink potion splashed down onto the table and from there to the floor.

"Idiot boy! I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?" The boy in question was in no shape to answer any questions, angry sores popping up all over his arms and legs and face, and Harry winced in sympathetic pain. "Take him to the hospital wing," Snape spat at the other boy sitting at that table before, with a single wave of his wand, making the entire potion vanish as though it had never been.

Another half an hour passed before Snape called them to stop. The rest of the class filed out while Harry was still struggling to maneuver the ladle in order to fill a vial with his potion. Not that it would do much good, he knew; not only was it incomplete, it was white and lumpy, almost like cottage cheese. "If your belongings are not in your bag and your sample on my desk within the next minute, you will get a zero for the day," the man said without looking up from the ledger he was busily writing in.

Harry finished packing up and carted his concoction to the front just inside that time limit, but his hurry earned him no points from the professor. "This is what you're handing in?" Snape sneered, looking up at him only once with an expression of total disdain before returning to his grading. "One would think, after the events of earlier today, you would have more incentive to learn how to make this potion properly."

Seething silently, Harry nonetheless set the vial down and stormed out. His feet carried him up two flights of stairs to the ground floor, and waiting for him at the top of the banister sat Lash. "Harry," she began, voice sounding strangely unsure, "I cannot say for certain, but the more I consider it, the more I think I recognize Snape."

"You do?"

"Yes. Do you recall the memories you viewed when we had to… touch up your aunt's mind?" He thought for a moment before nodding; while he could not call up any of them specifically, he did remember the event itself. "Perhaps you remember the memory she had of your mother and a black-haired boy when she was much younger? The boy had a—"

"A hooked nose. Yeah, I remember that," Harry agreed. "And he slammed the door in Aunt Petunia's face when she was watching him and my mum. Wait, are you saying you think that boy is Snape?"

"The noses do match."

After a second, he nodded. "You're right, they do. And the eyes and hair, too. Small world." Lash hummed in agreement. "But if he was friends with my mother, why did he seem to hate me so much?"

"There is no telling. They could have drifted apart as they got older, so her marriage and child did not make it to his ears. He might have simply forgotten; it has been over a decade since their deaths." She shrugged. "Any number of reasons are possible."

With a sigh of resignation, he continued plodding up the stairs. "Nothing to do about it right now no matter what the answer is, I suppose."

"Indeed. So what are you going to do, instead?"

"First I'm going to get some lunch, and then I'm headed back to the library." Harry glared at his useless hands. "Since I don't have any classes this afternoon and I can't hold a quill, now is the perfect time to start looking into healing magic. I get the feeling it's going to come in handy sooner rather than later."

* * *

"I'm just saying—" Harry yawned loudly. "—there really is no point in us having Astronomy class this late at night. They have magic; couldn't they just project an image onto the ceiling of a classroom during the normal school day?"

"More likely, they would use an illusion to turn the ceiling into the night sky, which would do you little good as long as you wear your anklet. In that light, night classes are actually to your benefit," Lash pointed out.

"But my way means class wouldn't be canceled if it was overcast or raining, and it'd be a lot more comfortable once winter arrives—"

He stopped in his tracks, the reason why more than obvious.

"Scuff marks," the Fallen pointed out unnecessarily. Just beside the handle of the door leading to Harry's dorm. She had expected this would happen, had warned him to take precautions to prevent it, but the sight before her still set her anger alight. Someone had tried to intrude upon _her host's_ domain. If only they had left some hint as to their identity; she would gladly teach them just what a folly it was to strike at one under her protection!

Taking a moment to calm her mounting rage, Lash forced herself to dissociate her emotions from the situation at hand. She knew not why she was reacting so strongly to this— No, that was a lie. She knew perfectly well the reason. Harry's filial affection for her was something she was already aware of, but him finally admitting to his feelings had inexplicably lent them greater weight, and she… Well, she felt protective of him.

But her protectiveness was perfectly reasonable. Harry was her path to redemption. If his life was cut short, she was once again destined for Perdition, and she had worked long and hard to escape that torment. Of course she would want to keep him safe. That did not mean she should let her emotions rule her.

"Why would they do this?" Harry grumbled. Glancing about him to make sure no one was lurking around, he pressed his hand against the door and disarmed the wards with a mutter of, "_Apahov_. What do they think they have to prove by breaking into my room? That they're stronger? Know more magic? They're older; that should go without saying. This doesn't make any sense."

"Because you do not understand the mindset of bullies or bigots. These people believe they are better than you due purely to the circumstances of their births, and any power they can achieve over you validates those beliefs in their minds. It does not matter that there is another, better reason."

The boy shut the door and raised the wards again. "So what are we going to do?"

"There is nothing to do tonight, not with your hands the way they are. Later, though…" Her grin was just a little more vicious than an angel's should be, but Harry did not seem to notice. "We can discuss making your defenses a bit more of an active deterrent."

* * *

**Yes, I know. Copying a canon scene with only small alterations is rather disappointing, but sometimes we all need to be reminded just how petty and spiteful Snape was in canon, especially with Rowling claiming that he is really this deep and interesting character.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	16. The Daily Prophet

**Guest (from chapter 14):** The big reason Harry's kidnapping didn't leave him distrusting of other _people_ is that the slavers obviously weren't human. They were humanoids masquerading as humans, which, well, is the entire reason he was so terrified of Ollivander that he was having flashbacks. As for the rest, that's the beauty of having a fallen angel with two millennia of experience manipulating humans in his head; she's provided some unobtrusive therapy from time to time. Harry being so distrustful of everyone else that he opens up to no one isn't part of her plans for him!

**"Why do none of the teachers do anything about the Bubotuber pus?":** There are three reasons for that part of the scene. First, did anyone ever do anything about the exact same thing happening to Hermione in book 4? Not really, or at least not that we saw. Second, Harry immediately left the Great Hall, so any faculty that might have helped him thought, "Okay, he's already headed for the hospital wing. No need for me to get involved, then." Third, yes xbox432, the elves' pancakes are that good.

"**Harry should just leave if the Wizarding World is being so horrible to him!":** I'm not going to disagree, necessarily, but guys, chill out and think about this for a second. I know it seems like longer because of the delays between chapters (and because it's taking me so long to get through this portion of the story), but Harry has been in Hogwarts for a grand total of three days by this point. Three. Days. At least let him get through an entire week before you start clamoring for him to take his ball and go home, okay?

**I know this is short, but between time constraints and personal stuff, I couldn't write everything I wanted to fit in this chapter, and it didn't seem right to hold it hostage just because I have issues.**

**That also means I'm not really in the right headspace for a fun disclaimer, so you guys know the drill.**

* * *

**Chapter 16  
****The Daily Prophet**

Harry's eyes were narrowed while he waited impatiently for Quirrell's class to end. Thursday morning the Slytherins spent entirely with the Hufflepuffs, first in Charms and then Defense, until taking the whole afternoon off. That was a good thing, in some ways; if he had any hope of finding out just what was going on with Sally-Anne and Dean, he needed to talk to the only person who seemed to know about it, and what better time and place to do so than between classes? He knew where the blonde would be, and surely there would be some opportunity to speak to her in private.

It was the second portion of his plan that was looking to be more difficult than he had initially expected. The Hufflepuffs moved as a group at all times. Even on the trip from Flitwick's classroom up to Quirrell's, they had formed up in something that looked like a single cohesive mass more than anyone else. He had heard by covertly listening in to conversations that the Hufflepuffs were considered to be cowards and 'leftovers', and while he could see where someone could have gotten that impression, he had seen with both the Veela and the vampire thralls just what kind of power a group with a single objective could bring to bear. If anything ever needled the least respected Hogwarts House enough, he had no doubts that they would whirl around as one entity and do their mascot proud.

If he had known they would be like this, he would have told the Sorting Hat to send him to Hufflepuff when it prodded him on whether or not he had a preference as to which House he should go to.

Of course, that unity also meant he would have a devil of a time trying to isolate one of their number from the rest, and considering how Sally-Anne had reacted when last they spoke, he was under no illusions that today was going to be gentler. Having nine angry students fighting back and keeping him from getting the information he needed was not something he wanted to deal with today. The fact doing exactly that was Plan D also showed just how likely it was going to be in the end.

The bells rang, calling all the hungry students to lunch, and Harry watched as the Badgers once again grouped together and moved out as one. That was Plan A done for; disappointing, but not unexpected. Still, there were other options available. He just needed to be a little crafty in how he approached this.

The other Slytherins passed him, none of them giving him so much as a second glance except for Nott, who swerved out of the way to knock him to one side. Fine. This actually worked out better for him. As he followed slowly behind his quarry, he almost smiled when he found a good angle. He did not have the experience to be sure that his spell would be accurate if used with his wand to fire the spell in a straight line, not to mention that it would be obvious, so Harry instead swept his hand in a diagonal motion at his hip and muttered, "_Diffindo_."

Just as it had when he practiced it in his dorm, the Cutting Charm left no trail or jet of light leading back to him when it sliced through the stitches holding Sally-Anne's bag together. The fabric fell apart at one seam, and all the parchment and books and quills held within spilled out into a pile on the floor. His anxiety spiked as the assembled Hufflepuffs talked amongst themselves, but eventually most of the group walked away, leaving only Sally-Anne, Susan, and Hannah behind to clean up.

It was now or never. "Hey," he called out as he walked up, "need some help?"

Hannah and Susan eyed him warily for a moment, but when all he did was pick up a couple of quills, they relaxed the faintest amount. Sally-Anne, however, was still watching him with wide eyes. "I want to apologize about Monday," he told her as he handed her things back. "I didn't mean to scare you like that. I didn't even know it would scare you."

She gave him a tentative nod.

The relieved smiles on the other girls' faces vanished when he continued, "I also want to apologize for today because we still really, really need to talk."

"She already told you she doesn't want to talk to you," snapped Hannah.

Sally-Anne refused to look at him, and he took a step forward, shoving past Susan's attempt to hold him back. "I think you know just how big a deal this is. You wouldn't be so scared if you didn't," he said. The tremulous blonde turned away and started curling up on herself. "But right now, we need to work together again. If you don't talk to me, there's nothing we— Put that wand down, Hannah."

"You're just like the rest of them, aren't you?" she nearly spat, her wand wavering but still aimed at him. "Slytherins are all bullies. Good for you, you've scared her. Now go away and leave her alone." From the corner of his eye, he could see that Susan had pulled out her own wand on his other side.

His jaw clenched, but he forced his irritation down. Quirrell's class was worthless, so neither girl could have learned anything from there, and if they knew something from before Hogwarts… Well, that was what his shield bracelet and Lash's lessons were for. "Sally-Anne…"

"I can't!" the girl cried, tears streaming down her cheeks. "Please, just go!"

Harry took another step toward her, and the sparks Susan desperately shot at him, harmless though he knew they were, was the last straw. "Damn it, Sally-Anne, I saved your life that day!" he yelled. His words stopped Hannah and Susan in their tracks, and the two witches glanced back and forth between him and Sally-Anne as if hoping for someone to tell them he had not just said what they thought he said. The girl he had saved from the slavers curling up even more only supported his claim. "The least you can do is tell me what happened after I left."

A whimper slipped through Sally-Anne's lips, but in the face of Harry's stony expression her already fragile resistance crumbled away. "W-When we got to shore, we… we just ran. Like you told us to." Harry nodded. At the time, none of them had any idea how things were going to go with the slavers. If any of them were going to make it out, they needed to run like the hounds of Hell were chasing them. "We found a store, a fishing store or something. The man who owned it was worried when he saw all of us piling in begging to use his phone. We dialed 999, but the woman who answered hung up on us."

"She what?!" he demanded. A bunch of kids claimed that they had just escaped from being kidnapped, and someone just ignored it?!

"W-Well…" Sally-Anne said softly, staring down at the stone floor, "we did… kinda… say we had been kidnapped by monsters. Which was true, just… didn't sound like it to somebody that wasn't there." Okay, that made more sense. "Jack said he lived close by, so he called his parents and asked them to come and get us all. That's when Dean came back, and he said he wanted to grab some blankets and stuff and he needed some of us to come and get you. He said…" She glanced up at him for just a moment before looking away again. "He said you almost drowned when you jumped off the boat."

"It was a near thing. If he hadn't been around to pull me to the surface…"

"Denise and I went to the back to look for the blankets, but that's when we heard them." All the blood drained from the girl's face, leaving her as pale as her House's ghost. "We looked behind us. It was a bunch of men; they just… _appeared_! Out of nowhere. Then they waved sticks around, and there were flashes of light, and…" She gulped. "And everybody just fell to the ground."

"Was it green?" Susan asked in a horrified whisper. Harry and Sally-Anne nearly jumped in surprise; they had all but forgotten the other girls were even there! "The light. Was it green?"

Sally-Anne shook her head. "It was red. Bright red. Denise screamed, and then we just ran. She tried to hide in a closet, and I hid behind a shelf. One of the men followed us, and then… and then…"

"He found her." It wasn't a question, but Sally-Anne nodded just the same.

"He hit her, too, and then he waved the stick again and made her follow him. She was just floating there, like she was this big puppet! I didn't make a sound. I just pretended I wasn't there for five minutes, until I was sure they were all gone. Then I went to the phone and called my parents so they could get me. I hid until they arrived."

"Oh, Sally-Anne," he said sadly, and the blonde took a couple of tentative steps toward him, as though she wanted to huddle up next to him but was still too scared to do so. "Why didn't you tell me about this when I tried to talk to you Monday?"

"I was scared," she answered. "After… After a while, I thought I was safe. They didn't come after me, so maybe they didn't even know I was there. I thought I was fine, even if… even if I knew all the others were dead." The last was whispered in the tiniest voice he had ever heard. "But then McGonagall came to our door, and she took us to that Diagon Alley place, and…"

She did not want to continue, so Harry gently prodded, "And?"

"And everybody was wearing the same kind of robes!" Sally-Anne's face was a mask of utmost terror. "And they all had the same kind of sticks, of wands! I didn't tell my parents about the men – I thought if I was the only one who knew, there was never any chance of them coming after me – so they didn't realize what that meant. But I did! I was terrified, and then I saw you and Dean here. Except Dean didn't remember me. I don't even know if it is Dean, if he isn't…" She shivered. "…isn't something else. I started reading lots of myths and fairy tales after everything, and some of them talked about things that can look like other people. They… They don't end well, especially not for anybody who discovers what they actually are."

That made a terrible sort of sense, Harry had to admit. It probably wasn't true, but he could certainly see where her fearful caution had come from. In her shoes, possessing that knowledge without a guardian angel teaching him how to protect himself? He could not say that he would not make the exact same decision she had. "So you were afraid I was not me, too." She nodded sadly. "Then why tell me about it now? Not that I don't want to hear this," he hastily added, "but I'd think you'd try to deny it."

"Because you already knew I knew something. If it really was you, then you deserved to know, too. If it wasn't…" She let out a single dark laugh. "If it wasn't and the tales were true, you'd kill me anyway. It just didn't matter anymore."

Harry sighed. From the way she had tried to avoid the conversation at first, he would put money down on her making that morbid decision in the last minute or two. "I don't think Dean has been replaced," he said instead. Sally-Anne looked at him questioningly, though her eyes were hopeful. "I mentioned knowing him, and he hasn't come after me. He just thought I was being overly familiar for a total stranger. I still don't know exactly what happened, but I'm going to figure it out. I promise you that."

"But… Okay," Sally-Anne finally said. "I still think it's better if I don't talk to him. Not unless you find some kind of proof that he's really him. It's too big a risk."

"All right," he agreed. It was not the best possible outcome, but if she had been living under fear of this threat for the last year, he would not begrudge her her reluctance. "I'll keep you in the loop if I find out anything."

"Thank you."

Harry turned to look at Hannah and Susan, who now were standing side by side and staring very intently at the floor. The blonde girl glanced up for just a moment before returning her gaze to the stone, and in the end it was the redhead who finally broke the silence. "We're sorry," she said, her voice soaked through with shame. "We… We shouldn't have said any of those things. And we shouldn't have assumed the worst of you for no reason."

'_No, you really shouldn't have'_ was what part of him wanted to say, but he held his tongue. He had never been especially good at holding grudges, something Lash had strangely bemoaned on more than one occasion, but just because he wasn't going to stay angry at them over the long term did not lessen the hurt of their instant suspicion of him just because of what House he had been Sorted into. After a moment, he finally told them, "I accept your apologies."

Which was quite different from telling the two girls they were forgiven. It was passive-aggressive and petty and he knew it, but he just could not bring himself to do that just yet. Not while the wound was still so fresh.

Neither girl seemed to catch that, or if they did, they did not call him out on it. Instead they nodded, Hannah giving him a weak smile, and then they rushed away, Sally-Anne nearly being carried between them.

Lash stepped out from behind them and tilted her head. "I do believe she is in for quite the interrogation."

"What she said…" The angel turned to look curiously at him. "About things that could take the place of people. Do they really exist?"

"Do they exist in this world? I have not the faintest idea. But in folklore?" She tapped her finger against her chin. "Fetches, dybbuks if they were possessing a corpse, draugar, revenants, wiedergänger; most variety of undead, honestly, though it would require hiding the smell and obvious visual hints of decomposition. And yes, they are all generally malevolent. Girl did her homework," Lash added in an approving voice.

"Doesn't help us much, though, does it?" he argued. "We still don't know what happened to Dean after they were attacked and taken away."

"But we do have some clues. It did not sound as if it took very long for those wizards to appear," the angel thought out loud. "Only a couple of minutes at most. And they ghosted, Apparated, what have you directly into the room. That kind of response is too accurate, too quickly executed, to be an accident."

"Someone told them where to find everyone."

"Indeed. I doubt it was the pirates; you did not exactly leave them in any condition to summon help. Likewise, I do not think it was the man who owned the store, nor the boy's, Jack's, parents. Which leaves…"

"The police?" Harry asked in disbelief. That was even worse than her just hanging up on the escapees!

"It makes sense," she replied. "They tell the dispatcher that they encountered monsters, and shortly afterward a team of wizards shows up? A year goes by, and the only person we know to have been taken by them has no memory of the event? The chain of events fits. I just do not know the reasoning behind it.

"I do, however, know where we might look."

* * *

"Madam Pince?" The unhappy woman glared down her nose at him, but Harry kept up a charming smile for her. "Do you have any back issues of the _Daily Prophet_ here?"

Several seconds passed in silence. "Back of the library, section G. And if you much as bend one of the pages, you will never set foot in here again."

"She can't actually do that, can she?" he asked once he had entered the stacks and started walking in the direction the sour librarian had indicated. "I mean, it's the school library. She shouldn't be allowed to bar any student from entering. Right?"

"Even if she could, you would still sneak in at night," Lash reminded him in a teasing tone. "But no, I do not believe she can. I think what her display was meant to do was unnerve you enough that you treat the books here with respect. Probably not the best way to approach that issue, but from your worry, not exactly ineffective, either."

"Oh, very funny," he bit out in response. "Why are we even looking here for answers, anyway?"

"If those wizards Sally-Anne told you about were truly notified about the children's location, the speed and precision of their arrival implies a long-standing protocol. That, in turn, implies either a conspiracy, whether it be with that particular dispatcher or the department as a whole, or – considering we know this culture has a central government – something a little more official. Start with the sixteenth of June," she told him when he started scanning the bound copies of the 1990 edition of the newspaper. "If it was done with official sanction, there is a chance they would have reported it to the media. Politicians live and die by their reputations, and good PR is something never to be ignored."

He obediently pulled out the June printings and flipped to that date. Leafing through the pages, only skimming the titles of the articles, he was unimpressed when he finally found a likely article at the second to last page. "Muggles saved from captors," he read in a quiet voice. Certain phrases leapt out at him, and these he repeated, more for his benefit than Lash's. "_'… A group of children Floo-called the Muggles' version of the MLEP and reported being kidnapped by monsters …' '… remnants of a Russian sailing ship found on the coastline near Southend-on-Sea at the mouth of the River Thames …' '… several bodies identified as Chaeris, a near-human species from Central America …' '… Obliviators were notified and dispatched immediately'_." That last bit reminded him of something, and it took only a moment to remember what. "Lash, could you—"

As though she had read his mind, a copy of _The Essential Thirty_ appeared before him, already opened to the last chapter, which was entitled _'Dealing with Muggles'_.

_Unfortunately, all the caution in the world is sometimes not enough_, Harry read. _It is all but inevitable that those who spend a great deal of time in the Muggle World will eventually find themselves in a situation where a Muggle sees something that he should not have. That is not to say that you should not take proper precautions to keep your magic hidden from the Muggles – upholding the Statute of Secrecy is everyone's responsibility – but you should still be prepared for the worst-case scenario._

_Take heart, however, for if one Muggle, or even many, finds out our greatest secret, there are still ways to salvage the situation. The most effective solution, rewriting their memories so they do not even remember what they saw, is beyond the scope and purpose of this book, though should you find yourself interested, the theory behind those spells is discussed in many texts dealing with magics of the mind. Instead, there is an office in the Ministry that has many wizards and witches trained especially for this kind of event: the Obliviators. These wonderful people are the best in the business at making sure our way of life is kept out of Muggles' sight, and in our discussions with the group during the process of writing this book, we have found them to be very helpful and understanding, so do not be afraid to call them if you ever need assistance. They understand that sometimes accidents just happen._

_The Obliviators have a direct Floo address for your convenience; simply activate your grate and call out 'Obliviation needed'. In case you are in a situation where you cannot get to a connected fireplace, they can also be reached by Muggle Floo at the numbers 020 7946 0457._

Harry stood silent for a moment, staring unseeing at the illusion of the book. "So that's why Dean acted like he didn't remember me," he finally forced out in a voice of faked levity. "He truly didn't. These Oblivators rewrote his memory."

"That might not have been a bad thing." He turned to the angel in disbelief, and she explained, "Oh, it is unfortunate that he no longer remembers you, but let us not forget that you still bear scars from that encounter, even if none of them are visible. You and Sally-Anne both, in fact. If I had some way of taking that memory away from you and thereby healing the trauma it inflicted?" Lash shrugged her shoulders, an almost sheepish expression on her face. "I cannot say that I would not at least try to persuade you to go through with it."

"Really?" he asked in a voice of faint disgust. "It's just so…" Searching for an appropriate word, he finally decided on, "…disturbing."

"Yes, it is, but is it any more disturbing than implanting commands in the Dursleys' minds in order to make them better people?" Harry grimaced and looked away at that, which only seemed to encourage her. "I believe I have told you this before, but psychomancy is very easy to abuse. When that happens, yes, it causes some of the worst atrocities that can be committed. But just because it can be used for evil purposes does not mean that it is evil by its nature." She shared with him a brittle smile. "Tools are not good or ill; they just are. It is the motives of those who use them that determine how the actions they make possible should be interpreted."

What she left unsaid was obvious, and reluctantly he let the words fall from his own lips. "And in this case, you don't think it was done with bad intent."

"No, I do not. Though that gives scant comfort, I know."

"I don't know that it even counts as 'scant'," he answered with a single humorless laugh. Looking down at the article again, he sighed. "But it means I have something good to tell Sally-Anne, at least. This says the Obliviators thought they were all Muggles, not Muggleborn. Now that it's obvious she has magic, she has nothing to fear from them."

Another sigh, and he pulled out his parchment to start copying down the relevant passages. He was sure she would like to go through the information firsthand just as he had.

* * *

**Gah. I swear, Sally-Anne is coming across more and more like a whipped puppy. Admittedly, it's because she's gotten stuck in her head the paranoid misconception that the Obliviators are going to swoop down on her at any moment for nefarious purposes, but still!**

**Steps 3 and 4, complete. On to step 5…**

**Silently Watches out.**


	17. Flying Lessons

**Highlord:** When I said that the Obliviators' actions were 'benign', I meant that they were not doing it out of any personal malice. Whether the protocol of removing the memories of magic from Muggles is moral or immoral in and of itself is a discussion I really do not want to get into, mostly because I can see both sides of that argument and don't have a good answer as to where I stand on it. What I will do is echo Lash: Obliviation is a spell that can be abused extraordinarily easily.

**No one asked about the mysterious and vaguely ominous steps I mentioned in my AN last chapter? I'm surprised. I was even willing to give some (relatively) straight answers to any questions I got about them. Oh well.**

**Disclaimer:** Did Draco Malfoy, poster boy of the latest generation of anti-Muggle bigots and who likely never stepped foot outside the Wizarding World, know what a helicopter was while Arthur Weasley, whose entire job it was to know about the Muggle world, couldn't even say 'electricity' correctly? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 17  
****Flying Lessons**

"Well, Pomfrey, what are you waiting for? Wake them up."

"And if you had been listening to what I just told you, Severus, you would know that I cannot and will not do that just yet," Poppy told him in a flat voice. "_Your _students need time to heal if they are going to be able to answer your questions. That is without the added difficulty that trying to pull wizards out of comas is a risky venture at best. Success is far from a certainty, and even when it works, there is still the possibility for negative consequences. They need to wake up on their own."

The dour man almost sneered at her, but it was still enough that she had no trouble reading the expression. "The longer they stay unconscious, the more time their attacker will have to cover his tracks. We need to know who would assault three of my Slytherins and dump them in a first-year's dorm room."

Privately, she had her doubts that whatever series of events that led them to today would paint the sixteen-year-olds laying in their beds as innocent as Snape wanted to believe, especially since she had treated a number of other students before who had attributed their conditions to being bullied by these same boys. Pointing that out would do no good, though; Snape was fanatical in his defense of his students, which would be a desired trait in a head of House were it not for the simple fact that he did so at the expense of everyone else in the school. "Then perhaps you should start with Mister Goyle," she instead said, her pleasant working smile not reaching her eyes. "Surely there was a reason for the other party, whoever it was, to break down a first-year's door and stick these boys inside rather than just leaving them wherever they fell."

Snape did sneer at her that time and whirled around, his robes billowing about him as he stormed off. Poppy just rolled her eyes at the display. One of the problems she had with Severus Snape was that she had been working in Hogwarts's hospital wing while he was a student himself, and that meant she still saw the child he had once been. A nasty, belligerent child, at that, one who was always quick to hold a grudge against even the most innocent of mistakes and who took a perverse glee in whatever petty revenge he could enact against those he convinced himself had wronged him in some way.

…No different than he acted now, really, which was another reason she could never see him as anything other than a self-absorbed teenager.

Now that the man was gone, however, she could return to the task he had interrupted: figuring out just what had happened to these three. A wave of her wand and a muttered incantation, and the elaborate display of colored spheres and pastel mist and golden wires reappeared over the nearest of her patients. Her eyes immediately leapt to the black spots that tarnished the gold strings, and no matter how hard she looked, that was the only thing she could find wrong with any of them. Their nerves were burned, horrifically so, and the precision of the wounds was as much proof as anything else that this had been deliberate. Even the tissues immediately adjacent to the affected nerves looked perfectly fine, but the nerves sitting just a few millimeters away? Total devastation. One boy's spine was so damaged that she honestly doubted he would ever walk again once he woke up. If he woke up, that was.

Shaking her head, she forced herself to shove away that useless pessimism and return to her collection of Healing texts. Hopefully one of her many books would have an explanation and a solution for her. If not, if she was still at a loss over what to do, she would have no choice but to transfer all three of them to St. Mungo's.

There was only one thing she did know at this point: whoever had cursed these three had absolutely hated, loathed, _despised_ them.

* * *

Harry had a small smile on his face as he walked out onto the grounds, and his simple joy must truly be infectious because Lash found herself with the selfsame smile on her own. Not that there was any reason for him not to feel content. It was Saturday, in children's minds the greatest day of the week; there was nothing he needed to do for any of this classes the following week, perhaps the only benefit of his current social isolation; and three people who wished him ill were no longer in a position to harm him.

That was part of the reason for her own grin, at least. She had known that whoever tried to break into Harry's dorm Wednesday night would try again, but she had not expected it would happen quite so soon. It made it even better that she had walked Harry through a more advanced ward scheme than he had ever attempted. The first layer of wards he had laid on his doorway was extremely simple and did little more than reinforce the door, and even though the ward on his shed was more active, actually being capable of repulsing anyone who attempted to gain entry, it was by no means complex.

What protected him now was far more effective. Passively resisting the people trying to hurt him would do nothing but encourage them to escalate, but at the same time, duplicating the ward from the shed was a bad idea. Not only would it be relatively easy to weaken by hurling heavy objects at it and thereby drain its energy supply, it also had a low threshold for activation. That was not a problem in Little Whinging, where anyone who approached his workspace would have to be focused enough and magically strong enough to fight through the avoidance spell he had erected over the little copse of trees, but in a school, such aggressive defenses would only draw attention to themselves. Instead, they had needed a combination of the two, something that would merely resist weak attacks but could respond with sufficient force to strikes above a predetermined level.

The answer to their dilemma was a style of defenses called carnivorous wards. This was not a separate ward in itself but rather an addition to the passive ward he already had in effect, though unfortunately that very complexity had necessitated Harry writing out the script over all four walls rather than trace the runes into the air around his door. Once a blow exceeded the defined value, in this case the degree of damage approximately equivalent to an average eleven-year-old falling or being shoved into the door, the carnivorous ward would rip the assailant's magic through him and then transform that very power into kinetic energy that could be applied against the attacker. Lash normally derided the White Council's natural passivity, but in this case she had to admire the sheer elegance put on display by their creation.

And, just in case any bully used physical force as their weapon of choice – the most obvious answer, admittedly, but if the books about defense they had read were any indication, the wizards of this world preferred their unusual and disconcerting effects to straightforward damage – Harry had modified his previous ward so that blows stronger than what the carnivorous ward would ignore would absorb and rebound the entirety of the striking force. That had a greater magical cost than her addition, but it was still better than simply weathering the attack.

"Hey, Lash? What is this 'special lesson' you wanted to do today?"

Rather than immediately answer, she pointed to a point across the grounds and far removed from the castle. "Go that way. The lesson I originally planned was going to be about ectomancy, but as there is no point in teaching you about a skill I doubt you will ever be able to use—"

"Why not?" he demanded with an adorable pout that she knew he would deny if she ever brought it to his attention. "Name one time I ever slacked off with anything you taught me."

"You certainly took a leisurely time creating your shield bracelet, did you not?" He flushed when she glanced pointedly at the small torc clasped around his left wrist. "But no, that was not what I meant. I did not think you would ignore the magic, necessarily; I just do not think you are capable of it." She held out her hand when he opened his mouth to interrupt and explained, "Ectomancy is, to some extent, an inherited trait. Other wizards may learn it, but they will never be as skilled as those born into the discipline. Additionally, I have never worked with a wizard who had learned it, so my knowledge on the actual mechanics is largely theoretical. It is one of the reasons the subject would be of only academic interest to you."

"But what is ectomancy, anyway?"

The Fallen shook her head. Clearly she should have chosen some other manner with which to introduce what she actually wanted to tell him rather than let him wander down this tangent. Still, she had no reason not to satisfy his curiosity. "It is the summoning, communication with, and persuasion of ghosts. In my old world, very few wizards could see ghosts, let alone speak with them. Here, of course, it is possible for a ghost to stop by for a chat while you are eating dinner, which is the other reason I doubt you will be able to do it. It is a difference in how magic works in this world and the one I hail from.

"Thankfully, there is something else I can teach you, something that I am sure is the same as what I am used to. Stop," she suddenly said. Harry staggered to a halt and looked up at the trees at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. "What do you feel?"

It took him only half a moment to understand what she meant, and then she heard a tiny echo, the faintest pop, as Harry reached out with his still immature magical sense. He had given her standing permission to use his senses while he slept after they learned how low his standing in Slytherin was, primarily in case someone was able to breach his ward and sought to attack him late at night, and it was thanks to this that she had discovered this potent presence. However, that was back inside the castle; here, just outside its domain, the force of the entity's mind was greatly magnified.

"What is that?" Harry breathed, his voice trembling. He took a quick step back, away from the trees.

"That, Harry, is a _genius loci_."

He looked at her as though she had just started speaking to him in Greek. She had not, of course; that term was Latin. "Very rarely – exceptionally rarely – specific regions of land become so magical, so powerful, that they actually develop sapience. Though intelligent and self-aware, they are still just earth and trees and animals, so to interact with other beings, they form projections of themselves by which they might walk and talk, fight or heal. We call those areas and their projections _genii locorum_, literally _'the spirits of the places'_."

"And…" He swallowed before turning wary eyes onto the darkening depths visible between the tree trunks. "And you think this place has one?"

"I am almost certain, and what little doubt I have is due to not knowing if there is some slightly different analogue in this world to what I am familiar with. This forest feels much too similarly to how the _genii locorum_ I have encountered before felt." She frowned and looked at him. "I should not have to say this, but after encountering Cerberus, I will do so. Stay out of the Forbidden Forest, Harry."

Glancing back and forth between her and the woods, he tentatively asked, "Are these spirit-things… dangerous?"

"They can be, yes, should you threaten them. Since _genii locorum_ are tied to specific locations, they are understandably protective of the places from which they sprang. Whether it is because sufficiently reshaping their birthplace would harm or even kill them or because they simply do not approve of strangers coming in and breaking their things, I do not know, but regardless of the reason, they brook no threats to their domains." Thinking over what she had just said, Lash amended, "That is not to say that they go out of their way to harm others. Leave them alone, and they will do the same to you. Even sitting so close to the edge of the forest, the castle should be in no danger. They are just… territorial, you could say."

"If they only go after people trying to hurt them, why are you so insistent that I don't enter the Forest?" Harry questioned doubtfully.

"The minds of _genii_ are not the same as a human's mind, nor an angel's. What you and I would not see as threatening behavior, it might. It is simply better to be appropriately cautious than foolhardy."

Lash nodded to herself at the wary expression on Harry's face when he looked one last time at the Forest before walking away. There were far worse things to encounter than a _genius_, so that he was not truly frightened, just cautious, was a good thing. That his caution was tinged with curiosity… Well, that was a good thing, too. Just as long as he did not allow his curiosity to lead him into poking his nose where it was not safe as he had done with Cerberus's new kennel.

"That is the majority of what I wanted to tell you," she said in a much brighter tone. "You said you wanted additional practice using the curses from that book on moving targets, yes? I saw from a window that there is a small hillside just over there that should provide plenty of cover from prying eyes…"

* * *

Harry had never believed before coming to Hogwarts that he would find any boy he hated as much as he had Dudley prior to altering his cousin's personality, but Theodore Nott was doing a good job of changing his mind. At seemingly every opportunity, Nott would say something to draw attention to how new Harry was to this culture he had landed in, and his attitude always reflected the belief that somehow Harry would never really fit in with the people who had grown up in it. A stupid assumption, he thought, considering anybody who had ever immigrated to another country was eventually able to adjust to his new home.

This irritating mindset was once again evident the following Thursday as the first-year Slytherins walked down to the grounds near the Quidditch pitch for their first flying lesson. "… and then he showed me some tricky plays only a really good Keeper could pull off effectively. He was really quite astonished at how quickly I picked them up. Of course, my father is good friends with Marcus Cummins – the manager for the Wanderers, you know – so it only made sense I could fly so well when I've spent my whole life around professional Quidditch players," boasted the brunet. Then his gaze landed on Harry. "What about you, Potter? With how silent you are, it's like you've never even seen a broom before, let alone ridden one."

Harry rolled his eyes. Any excitement for learning how to ride a broom was rapidly being beaten down by all the repetitious and undoubtedly exaggerated or even imaginary feats the rest of his year claimed to have accomplished astride their Nimbles or Cleanswiffers or whatever. "Oh, no. When Muggles fly, we do so in comfort. Nice armchairs, food and drinks provided to you, beds in case the flight is planned to last through the night. Much better than sitting on top of a stick and getting bugs splattered across your face, wouldn't you say?"

For just a moment, Nott stared at him as though unsure if he were lying or telling the truth, but that quiet second soon passed. The boy huffed and sneered at him. "Like your opinion matters. Everybody knows brooms are far superior to anything those Muggles have managed to cobble together."

If his opinion didn't matter, Harry wondered, why had Nott solicited it? Before he could say anything in response, they arrived at their destination and spread out in a line, everyone next to a broomstick. Any attempts at conversation were quickly quailed by a single glare from Madam Hooch's disturbing yellow eyes, at least until the gaggle of Gryffindors finally wandered over to join them.

"Well, what are you waiting for?" the woman barked, walking up and down the lines. "Everyone stand by a broomstick. Hold out your right hand over your broom and say 'Up!'"

The broom Harry had picked out, one on the very end of the row, slapped into his hand almost before he could get both letters out of his mouth. It was also one of the few that did so. Several had risen a few inches into the air at other Slytherins' lazy drawls only to drop back to the ground, almost as if they were unimpressed with their potential riders and were expressing their disdain in the only way they could; on the Gryffindor side, a number of broomsticks had not moved at all, and he could not help but notice that those people appeared torn between disappointment at having failed and relief at the chance to keep their feet firmly planted on the ground.

Hats, paintings, and now even brooms? Harry shook his head, a wry smile on his face. Magic had made so much more sense back before it seemed to give anything and everything personalities all their own.

For the next several minutes, Hooch showed them how to mount their broom properly – amusingly, they were told only to ever mount a broom from the left-hand side, as if it would buck them off and run away the same way a real horse would – and then walked up and down the lines correcting their grips. Harry she simply nodded to and continued on, which made him grin when she then told Nott and Malfoy that their grips were terrible and would wind up breaking their fingers if they so much as caught a stiff wind at the wrong angle.

"Now," she told them all once she returned to her own broom, "when I blow my whistle, you will kick off from the ground hard. Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet by pulling gently back on the handle, and then come straight back down by leaning forward slightly. On my whistle. Three, two—"

"Ahhhh!"

One of the Gryffindor boys was a little too jumpy and had shoved off from the ground ahead of the whistle, and now he was flying straight up at a faster speed than Harry would have dared try his first time. At twenty, maybe thirty feet up, the boy lurched to one side, his hands scrabbling desperately for the shaft he had momentarily let go of, and then he was falling… falling…

CRACK!

All nineteen students jumped at the sickening snap, and if Hooch had not already been sprinting toward the ground where the boy lay motionless, that would have eked out any last-minute reserves she had hidden away. Closing his eyes halfway and focusing on his ears, Harry could just make out what she was saying as she leaned over the fallen Lion. "Broken wrist," she whispered, her relief obvious in her voice.

Broken bones? That was one of the subjects covered by the book on magical first aid Harry had read following his disastrous first and only encounter with hate mail, and while he was not confident in his skill with that spell due to a total lack of experience, he had practiced a good numbing spell that would offer some short-term comfort if nothing else. Barely had he taken a single step forward, however, when a hand pressed into his chest and stopped him mid-stride. Glancing up at Lash, he was shocked when she just shook her head. He glanced at Hooch and the boy, then back at the angel. Surely she wasn't suggesting…? Lash shut her eyes, but once again she shook her head, more forcibly this time.

The rest of the world had not paused for their silent conversation. At the injured boy's whimper, Hooch continued in a gentle, comforting tone, "Come on, boy. It's all right, up you get." The woman looked over the rest of the class, the boy – Longbottom, Harry finally remembered – held carefully under her arm and her glare hardened by her previous terror. "None of you is to move while I take this boy to the hospital wing! Leave those brooms where they are, or you'll be out of Hogwarts before you can say 'Quidditch'."

A different hand grabbed the back of his robes and gave them a sharp tug, and Harry looked over to his left to find Pansy Parkinson scowling at him. "Slytherins stick together," the hard-faced girl hissed at him in a quiet voice, her upturned nose scrunched in distaste and ignoring completely the contradiction between her statement and how others in their House, her included, had treated him over the last week and a half. "If you wanted to wipe away crybaby Gryffindors' tears, you should have gone to their House. You're a Slytherin now. Act like it."

And then she scrubbed her hand on her robes as though it were covered in muck.

Instead of troubling himself with Parkinson, he turned confused and disappointed eyes on Lash. "I know you wanted to help," she said without prompting, "and by itself, that is an admirable trait. But there is a time and a place for everything; this was neither. You know the four Houses of Hogwarts are highly insular. When dealing with groups like that, you always need to keep in mind that they tend to be… less than appreciative of outsiders interfering in their affairs. Yes, even when your intentions are noble," she added before his doubt could make it to his face. "Consider how little trust you have from the Gryffindors for something as insignificant as what House you were sent to. Do you think they would trust you to help one of their own, or would they be more likely to think you had some nefarious purpose and move to stop you?"

"That's not just distrustful. It's downright paranoid," he muttered as quietly as he possibly could, the words so soft even he could barely hear them.

"Look! It's that stupid thing Longbottom's gran sent him."

"I am aware of that— Really?" Harry and Lash turned to watch the proceedings. It had taken a moment for him to recover fro the shock of watching another eleven-year-old be in such danger, or maybe he just needed a second to gather the courage, but either way Malfoy had walked over to taunt the Gryffindors and now stood with a small white ball held in his hand. "Mayhap it is a good thing he refused to associate with you, after all," she continued in a contemptuous tone. "That boy is an idiot. They just saw one of their own be injured. All he is doing now—"

"Give it back, Malfoy!" Weasley shouted.

"—is poking an open wound."

Malfoy smiled nastily and leapt onto the broom in his hands. For all the grief Hooch had given him about his grip, he certainly did fly well. "No, I think I'll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to find. How about… up a tree?"

"Let me guess," Harry muttered, "you don't want me to get in the middle of this, either."

"Absolutely not. If it were a matter of someone else being in danger, it would be one thing. The only reason I stopped you a minute ago was out of concern for you and potentially your own safety. This? This is about an insignificant bauble. What reason is there for you to trouble yourself over a fight about nothing?"

The redhead obviously disagreed with Lash's assessment; he hopped onto his own broomstick and took off after the blond despite the warnings Granger, a Gryffindor girl with bushy brown hair, tried to give him.

Harry winced at the next words that came out of Malfoy's mouth. "Catch it if you can!" Weasley sped away after the marble, and Malfoy immediately dropped back to the ground. He was rearranging his robes and positioning his broom to make it look like he never left, and a moment why Harry understood why. McGonagall walked into sight just in time to see Weasley crash spectacularly into the ground, the ball slamming down immediately after him with a tinkling shatter.

"RONALD WEASLEY!" she yelled, her face stark white and her fists clenched tight. "Never, in all my years here, have I ever seen such recklessness and abject stupidity! Not even your brothers would have done something so dangerously foolish! Up, up!" She hauled Weasley to his feet and started dragging him back toward the castle. "Two months' detention— No, three! And fifty points from Gryffindor! You can expect your mother to hear about this, young man, and I assure you…"

Several of the Slytherins smirked smugly at Malfoy or sent sneers at the scowling Gryffindors, and watching them, Harry wondered if he might have been sent to the exact wrong House.

Once Hooch returned to the grounds, the rest of the lesson continued without incident. Flying, Harry discovered, was not that hard at all; steering his broomstick actually came rather intuitively to him. He would not mind having one of his own, honestly, if not for the fact that listening in to his housemates' conversations meant he had heard how expensive brooms could be. Just because he had money now didn't mean it was smart to spend it all on something he really did not need.

"You obviously enjoyed that lesson," Lash commented as they walked back to the castle. "I take it you want one for yourself?"

"We don't know how much they cost," he pointed out.

She grinned slyly. "Who said anything about _buying_ one? None of the wizards I worked with ever accomplished creating a flying broom, but several tried with varying success, and we have at our fingertips a large library that might just contain details concerning their construction." Harry found a matching smile appearing on his own face. "I think we can figure it out."

* * *

Between his classes, his forays into the library to look for books on broomsticks for him and everything under the sun for Lash, and ignoring the insults of his fellow Slytherins, Harry was rather surprised to glance at the calendar on the morning of Halloween and see that two months had already passed.

It helped that those insults had actually died down about the middle of September. He did not know the exact reason why that had happened, but he did have a shrewd guess that it had something to do with the three older boys who had tried to break into his dorm still not having woken up yet. They had even been transferred to a magical hospital for long-term care, something Lash admitted she had not expected but that neither of them felt all that bad about. He had not sought them out, nor had he encouraged them to attack him. They would have been just fine if they hadn't gone out of their way to hurt him.

A few students, fourth- and fifth-years, made small overtures to him and talked about letting him hang out with the older kids after that news spread around, but Lash had quickly seen through them to the political ambitions at the heart of those conversations, and despite her occasional suggestions, he had stuck to his previous decision. He did not like politics, and he was not going to let himself become a pawn in one of their games. His only plan in that arena was, to use her analogy, to become a turtle. Once that became plain, even those offers dried up. He might now be at the bottom of the Slytherin social ladder, but it was far more comfortable sitting on the ground than constantly worrying about other people kicking him off so they could climb a few rungs higher.

Taking in the truly impressive decorations that filled the Great Hall that night – live bats flapping around the rafters, jack-o'-lanterns grimacing from midair, ghosts popping in and out of the room through the walls and floor – Harry seated himself at an empty place at the table and looked over the impressive spread of food in front of him. Meals at Hogwarts generally were not as opulent as the feast at the start of term had been, but this was definitely close. Now he only had one concern: what was he going to eat first? Just when he was reaching for a baked potato, the doors of the Hall flew open, and several people shouted in fear.

Harry had to stand on the bench to see over the heads of the other students, and what he saw shocked him. Quirrell, his face even paler than usual, staggered down the aisle; the robes at his left side were soaked through, and that arm hung uselessly. He stumbled and reached out with his only functional arm to stop himself from falling, and the Gryffindor girl near where he grabbed onto the table squealed when he stepped away to show the red handprint on the wood.

The headmaster stood. "Quirinus, what happened?" he demanded in a no-nonsense tone.

"T-T-T-T-T—" Quirrell took a deep breath and coughed, the sound sick and wet. "T-T-T… In dungeons. T-T-Troll."

And then the man collapsed, blood starting to pool around him.

* * *

**We've finally made it to the first major timeskip of this year! It's funny, but I originally planned for Harry's first year at Hogwarts to take five, maybe six chapters to get through, yet currently we're at number seven and only just now getting to the Halloween debacle. Hopefully things will start rolling a little faster now.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	18. Halloween

**Thistle:** Thanks for pointing that out! Yeah, the other HP stories I've done have all had the main character be in their mid-teens or older, and those are the kinds of things I would think about when I was that age, so I didn't notice I was keeping that mindset when I switched back to my lone 11-year-old (though I'd like to point out that I knew what embezzlement was as an 11- or 12-year old, even if only vaguely, so I don't think that example is all that outlandish). I'll keep a better eye on it in the future.

**Disclaimer:** Did no one notice that by sending the Houses to their dormitories, Dumbledore was essentially forcing half the school to risk finding themselves in the path of the troll he was presumably trying to protect them from? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

"_T-T-T-T-T—" Quirrell took a deep breath and coughed, the sound sick and wet. "T-T-T… In dungeons. T-T-Troll."_

_And then the man collapsed, blood starting to pool around him._

* * *

**Chapter 18  
****Halloween**

There was a second of silence. Just one, as Quirrell's message echoed throughout the Great Hall. Just one, as that message warred with incredulity in the minds of staff and students alike. A stillness fell over them, as though the world itself held its breath.

Then the world let it back out, and everyone panicked.

The Halloween Feast devolved into pandemonium. First- and second-year students from all four Houses screamed in terror, some bunching up in groups in the hopes of attaining safety in numbers while others were too busy staring at the adult who was laying unconscious on the ground instead of telling them they were safe like adults were supposed to do. Older students were less vocal but no less scared as they looked up to the prefects for guidance on what to do, but those prefects were no more than students themselves and subject to the same fear that had gripped the rest of the school. Teachers yelled from the front table, each giving different and contradictory commands to the point that their voices blended into an unintelligible cacophony.

The ceiling and walls rumbled when a gigantic cannon was fired, and silence once more fell over the crowd while they all turned to stare at the headmaster. The few times Harry had seen Dumbledore before, mostly at dinner here and there, he had thought the old man was just that, an old man who had grown tired of teaching and had taken an administrative position rather than really retire. Now, though, looking at him staring down at the assembled children? Harry started to understand just why McGonagall had said he was the only person You-Know-Who had ever feared. His stern expression was certainly forbidding enough.

"Prefects," Dumbledore said in a voice of command, "lead your Houses back to their dormitories immediately!"

"What stupidity is this?" Lash demanded, her voice unheard by all.

Harry stood with the rest of the Slytherins and soon found himself shoved to the outside of the mass that formed as the House clustered around the prefects. Since there was no one able to hear him over the noise, he turned to the angel and asked, "What do you mean, stupidity? Wouldn't my dorm be safer than here?"

"And what part of the castle do you have to walk through to get to your dorm?"

"The dun… geons…" His eyes grew wide. "Oh."

She bared her teeth in a mirthless smile. "Yes, _oh_."

An wave of dazed-looking Hufflepuffs swept across the room in their direction. "Petersen!" a prefect garbed in yellow and black called out.

Someone grabbing his elbow and yanking him away from his Housemates distracted him from the conversation between the prefects. With his nerves already keyed up, he jumped in surprise and whirled around, or at least he tried to. The blonde who had wrapped herself around his arm made the second part of his startle reaction a little more difficult than it normally was. "Sally-Anne?"

She looked up at him with brown eyes that were wide with terror. "I'm staying with you."

"No great shock there," Lash said, catching him by surprise. "Think about it. The last time she faced a monster, who saved her? You did. When they were found by the Obliviators, on the other hand, you were not around, and she has lived in terror of that encounter for more than a year. It would be foolishness for her not to see you as someone she knows can protect her, or if nothing else a safety blanket of sorts."

"Sally-Anne?! Where'd she go? Sally—" Hannah caught sight of them and smiled weakly. "Oh. Er, hey, Harry."

"Hannah. Susan," he added when the redhead appeared. Even though the issue of the two outgoing Hufflepuffs thinking he was a bully had resolved itself the first week of the term, they had still maintained their distance; they would offer him shy waves if they caught him looking at them when they passed each other in the halls, but that was about it. Lash suspected it had something to do with their embarrassment at misreading the situation between him and Sally-Anne so grossly, but she did not know for sure, and as far as Harry was concerned, she was far better qualified to understand the mystery of what went on in girls' minds. Rather than bring up their pervious missteps, he instead jerked his head toward the conspiring prefects and asked, "Do you know what they're talking about?"

"The Slytherins aren't the only House who have their dorms in the dungeons," Hannah told him. "We do, too. Not as deep as yours are – as yours are rumored to be, I mean," she quickly corrected, "but we still have to head down. And since that's where the troll is, it makes sense for us to go down together?"

"They put half the school in danger?" he could not help but ask, his words drowned out by the seventh-year prefects of Hufflepuff and Slytherin called for the two groups to follow. "That's just so…"

"Foolish?" his guardian angel offered with a cold smile. "Short-sighted? Illogical? Preoccupied with the safety of the Gryffindors, his old House, even if it comes at the expense of the House with whom his own has long feuded?"

"Really?"

Sally-Anne peered up at him. "Did you say something?"

"No, no," he told the girl, "just thinking out loud."

"I have little evidence for that claim, I will admit. That said, it is still a possibility." She shrugged. "Not likely, but not impossible. I would still think that someone who has been the headmaster of this school for decades would realize the risks of sending two Houses in the direction of the troll he is trying to protect them from, however. Or, if not, that he would think of keeping everyone together in the Great Hall where the entire student body is in one easily defensible position.

"I just hope he appreciates that none of the Gryffindors will be in any danger from this beast that now endangers you."

* * *

An ear-piercing scream rang through the halls, and the cry of pain and fear lent wings to Minerva's feet. The staff had learned from questioning a number of paintings that though the troll in question had been in the dungeons, it had left that area of the castle nearly ten minutes previously; unfortunately, too many of the portraits had abandoned their frames and hidden from the beast to know where it had gone after that. Instead, Albus split them up so they could search Hogwarts faster than was possible with a large group, though they had agreed to send signals if anyone found where the troll was wandering in the castle's labyrinthine passages.

To her horror, it sounded like someone else had run into it first.

She was halfway to what she now recognized as a girls' lavatory when she heard a loud, victorious roar, and her Scottish temper beat a rapid tattoo on her temple. Running through the doorway, the opening missing its door, she saw the troll for only an instant before her wand slashed violently through the air. Shattered boards from the demolished stalls flew together into a pair of skeletal hands that grabbed hold of the troll and smashed it into the stone wall. More wood joined the hands to strengthen the restraints holding the monster in place, and she jabbed her wand at the structure again and watched the brown boards take on the flat black of iron and fuse themselves to the wall. The troll roared again in fury, but to no avail; there was no way it was getting out of that hold on its own.

Thirst for vengeance satisfied, she turned her eyes to the first-year lying on the floor. The girl looked so tiny amongst the ruins of the room, but when she crept closer, Minerva's heart flew into her mouth. Miss Granger was still alive. Barely, but better than nothing!

"_Immobulus_! _Stupefy_!" she nearly screamed. She needed to get this girl to the hospital wing as fast as possible, but she remembered Poppy's warning as clearly as if the woman was shouting it in her ear now rather than several minutes before. In cases of severe trauma, which a blow from a troll's club was almost by definition, the person injured had to be immobilized before transport. The Full Body-Bind was the best spell for that purpose if it would not move the person much, but with the way Miss Granger had been bent around? The Freezing Charm was quicker to fade and far less comfortable, but it was probably the safer course, and after being Stunned, comfort was not something that had to be considered at this moment.

The run to the hospital wing had never seemed so long as it was tonight, and despite her relative youth compared to some of her colleagues, Minerva was still panting like a dog when she finally arrived. "Poppy," she managed to call out, "help!"

The Hovering Charm was taken out of her grasp, and she sent a Patronus message to Albus while Poppy maneuvered the girl onto a bed and muttered several long incantations. She had no idea what the multicolored collection of spheres and mist that appeared overhead was supposed to mean, but even someone as clueless as she could tell that all the red splotches were probably not a good sign.

Poppy kept a running monologue as her eyes swept over the display. "Depressed skull fracture; probably a concussion, too. Complete fracture of the neck of the right humerus with total shattering of the head. Shattered scapula. Fractured clavicle. One, two, three broken ribs with flail chest. Right lung apex is likely bruised, but respiration is intact. Crush fractures to five thoracic and lumbar vertebrae with primarily anterior displacement of fragments. Spinal cord appears intact, but multiple penetrations to abdominal aorta—"

"What does that mean?" Minerva asked in no little fear.

"She isn't paralyzed, but she's in serious danger of bleeding to death once the Freezing Charm wears off," the nurse answered. "Pelvis is completely trashed with serious blood loss there, too, and a broken femur to top it all off. I don't even want to go into how severely her abdominal viscera was damaged. Minerva, I've never seen anyone with injuries this bad before."

"But she'll be okay, right?" she demanded. "You can heal her?"

"Heal her?" Poppy was eyeing her with shocked confusion and a little panic of her own. "Minerva, I'm a school nurse, not a trauma specialist! All I can do for her is make sure she's stable enough to survive the transfer to the hospital."

Shaking her head, the other witch continued, "I'm going to need your help. When I give you the signal, I want you to remove the _Immobulus_. A Medical Stasis Charm will last longer and will be easier for the Healers to work through. Less chance of it wearing off in the Floo, as well." Pointing her wand at the girl, Poppy began chanting in what sounded like Greek for nearly twenty seconds before glancing at Minerva and nodding sharply. Minerva removed the charm.

With Poppy preoccupied with floating Miss Granger over to the fireplace, the Deputy Headmistress turned her attention to the other patient in the infirmary. The sheet was pulled up all the way to Quirinus's neck, but now that the ridiculous purple turban he had started wearing to hide his receding hairline was gone, she could see just how frightfully pale he was. The three bottles of Blood-Replenishing Potion by his bedside, all empty, did little to comfort her.

"He's in far better shape than she is," Poppy told her, jolting the black-haired witch out of her reverie. "Broken ribs and arm, a small bleed in his lung, but that's about it. Once I patched his lung up, the rest was fairly simple. He should be fine to resume teaching in two or three days, but he won't be up to doing anything strenuous for a couple of weeks after that."

"And the potions?"

"Keeping his blood count up was already difficult thanks to the anemia, and he lost a lot more tonight. Those potions should have replaced most of it by tomorrow morning, though." She gave Minerva a tiny, weak smile. "I guess the only good thing is he was supposed to come in for his weekly dose on Saturday, anyway. Now he won't have to worry about it."

The door to the hospital wing slammed open, and Albus stormed in, Severus flitting about behind him like a shadow. "What. Happened?"

After Minerva gave him a very brief rundown of what he had missed, the headmaster slumped into a nearby chair and rested his head in one of his hands. Several seconds passed before he finally spoke. "But she will recover, won't she, Poppy?"

"She should, Professor," the nurse answered. "Physically, that is. Mentally?" Poppy could only shrug.

Filius and Pomona had slipped in during her explanation, and now the head of Hufflepuff demanded, "Why didn't we just leave the students in the Great Hall? My students' common room is in the dungeons! Severus's, too."

"Like I told Severus, it was a risk, yes," he said with a sigh. "It was not my preferred course of action. However, the Great Hall has no defenses of its own. Anything that can breach the main doors or is already inside the castle can enter and exit at will. The common rooms, however, do have defenses, and without the proper passwords, no one can enter them. The children were actually safer from the troll in their dorms.

"What I am actually concerned about is who let the troll in." Albus flicked an unreadable glance over at Quirinus before directing his attention back to Poppy. "Has he woken at all? We need to know if he saw anyone with the troll."

"He hasn't, and I'm not going to try to wake him up just for that," she said firmly, crossing her arms over her chest. "You know the chances he can tell us who brought the troll in are practically nonexistent. More likely, he encountered just the troll."

"I know, but I still need to ask," he sighed. "Unless he did, our situation is an unenviable one. There's someone extremely dangerous at Hogwarts, someone who has no compunctions against killing children to get what he wants, and we have no idea who he might be."

* * *

The first frost fell upon Hogwarts the night of Halloween, and by the time Saturday rolled around a couple of days later, walking outside without a heavy coat and scarf and gloves was an exercise in foolishness. That did not stop the entire school from pouring out so they could sit on hard wooden benches around the Quidditch pitch.

The first game of the season, Slytherin versus Gryffindor, had arrived.

Harry huddled up on his seat and watched three players for each team fight over a big red ball. Two more black balls raced around the pitch, both being hit away by another pair of players, and then there were the four flyers who were not doing much of anything at the moment. He had hoped there would at least be a quick introduction to the game for everyone like him who was originally from the Muggle world, but apparently Muggleborns were supposed to learn all this from their Housemates ahead of time, which would be fine were it not for the attitude within the House of which he had been named a member. His eyes swept about the crowd around him before they landed on another first-year sitting ahead and slightly to one side of him. "Zabini," he whispered, his voice just loud enough that the Italian-born boy glanced to the sides. "Zabini!"

This time the young wizard turned around and looked at him. "What?" he drawled.

"Any chance you can give me a quick summary?"

Zabini squinted in confusion before rolling his eyes. "You really are hopeless, Potter," the boy said before launching into a fast-paced explanation. "The Chasers try to get control of the Quaffle and get it through the hoops, the Keeper's job is to stop them, the Beaters hit the Bludgers away from their teammates and toward the other team, and the Seekers try to find the Golden Snitch. They catch that, and the game's over." With that incredibly brief introduction finished, the dark-skinned boy turned his attention back to the game.

"Well," Harry muttered to himself, "that was less than helpful."

"Getting information out of your classmates is like pulling teeth," Lash's voice agreed. The space between him and the older witch setting next to him distorted and stretched, and it was in that new gap that his angel appeared. She, too, was dressed for the weather even though they both knew she could not feel the cold, but rather than his thick robes she wore normal jeans and jumper and a pure white scarf. "Still, it was enough to figure out what is going on."

Some Slytherin players tossed the red ball, which he could only assume was the Quaffle Zabini had mentioned, through one of the three hoops on Gryffindor's side. Ten points were awarded.

"So Chasers and Keeper," he muttered, assigning the players their likely titles and blinking in surprise when those words came into existence above their heads and followed them. Beside him, he could just make out Lash's smirk. "Red ball is the Quaffle, black balls are probably the Bludgers, and that would make the players with bats the Beaters. Which could only mean the two who aren't participating in the game are the Seekers." More labels appeared. "Okay, that's not too complicated."

The rest of the game passed in silence, his lack of participation covered up by the loud cheers and boos coming from the crowd around him. Perhaps if he had been one of the people actually playing the game, or even had someone to talk to about it, he would find this more interesting. As it was, though, the most help he received was from the color commentary of the announcer, who he quickly learned was a Gryffindor named Lee Jordan, and half of that was complaining about the Slytherins' behavior. Not that some of it was not justified – it was hard to believe that slamming into another player or even punching an opponent in the head could be anything but a foul – but that was just some, not all. The majority was irritation when they did well and were playing within the rules. It was yet another division between the Houses, and the more he saw of Hogwarts, the more he agreed with Lash's description of them as insular and restrictive.

All told, he was feeling rather underwhelmed at this point.

About an hour later, the Seeker from the Slytherin's side swooped down to the ground, and when he came back up, he was holding something in his upraised hand. Lash magnified that part of Harry's vision enough that he could see a tiny ball of gold, and then a loud horn blasted and a whopping hundred and fifty points were added to the Slytherins' score. It was more than enough to counter the Gryffindors' twenty point lead. As the audience stood to begin the trek back to the warm castle, Lash framed her chin with one hand and muttered, "And everything starts to fall into place."

"Did you say something?"

"Sports and games often reflect the society in which they develop," she explained with a frown, "and I highly doubt this is an exception. Additionally, as a sport grows older and more entrenched, the lessons its viewers learn from it begin to be applied to other, non-athletic problems." He was still clueless about what she meant for him to have understood from that, and she sighed. "Think about the game you just watched. What implications do you think it has on the culture in the castle?"

He honestly didn't think there were any implications, but Lash seemed to disagree. "Well, there were three Chasers trying to score against a single Keeper, which isn't that different from how the forwards work together in football. So I guess it's proof that wizards and Muggles aren't really that different?"

"True, but not what I was talking about," she groaned. "The Seekers, Harry. What interactions did they have with the rest of the players?"

Harry stopped and thought about that for a moment. "Not much. They were too busy looking for the Snitch."

"Exactly. The Snitch whose capture signals the end of the game. The Snitch that awards the catching team a plentitude of points that, assuming this is a representative example of the sport, makes the struggles of the Chasers and Keepers all but irrelevant. Recall what I said about sports being applied to real-world problems. The average wizard is used to seeing a special individual swooping in and solving all his problems for him regardless of what he has done in the meantime to solve them himself. I would go so far as to say that it is now expected. It is, I believe, why it was so easy for adults to accept that a baby could defeat a Dark Lord when fully trained adults could not; they were not special, but you must be.

"There is another similarity I wish to bring up, one with which you are again personally familiar," she continued, and the grimace on his face only grew. He already did not like what he was hearing, and she wanted to take it further? "Seekers are distant from the rest of the team, nearly unapproachable, but there were two situations in which they were part of the wider game." She held up two fingers. "The first was when Flint slammed into the Gryffindors' Seeker to knock him off course, and the second was all the times the Beaters from both teams aimed Bludgers at them. No support, no teamwork, but lashing out at them was perfectly acceptable. Do you see where I am going with this now?"

Harry scowled. Unfortunately for him, he did see the point she was making. He just did not like it in the slightest. "The hate mail. People can call me a hero all they want, can expect me to save their skins, but as soon as I do something they don't like, like being Sorted into Slytherin, they think I'm fair game for whatever retaliation they want to try."

"Correct. I am sorry," the angel said sadly.

"Don't apologize. It's nothing you did." Not to mention it wouldn't do any good. If he could get all the people who thought these kinds of things to apologize, that would be a different story, but he doubted that would ever happen. Looking over the empty pitch again, he decided, "You know, I really don't think I'll watch any of the other games."

"I did not mean to ruin your entertainment—"

"It isn't that," he told the angel. "I just didn't like it that much to begin with." And if her observations made him like it even less? It was just a further push down a road he was already walking.

* * *

It took a week for Granger to finally come back from the hospital. Her absence had been noted by some on the Friday after Halloween, but the reason why did not spread around until the weekend was over. Apparently, the youngest Weasley had insulted her and sent her crying to the bathroom on Halloween, and it was there the troll they had all been worried about had found her. The redhead spent a couple of days receiving ugly glares when that news leaked out, but by the time Granger returned, that storm had mostly blown over. Few Gryffindors were willing to stand up for the girl; from the rumors that were being spread around, she had no real friends among her own House.

Harry knew how that felt.

Finding Granger was simple enough; much like him, she spent the majority of her time in the library. She probably was not there to satisfy her guardian angel's curiosity, admittedly, but even without that outside influence, the library was the perfect place for outcasts like them to hide from their own Housemates when it was obvious they were unwelcome. As soon as he spotted her sitting alone at a table near the back, he stepped out of sight. A moment to smooth his face of his own disgruntlement and put on a gentle, friendly smile, and then he walked out from behind the bookcase and approached her table. "Good afternoon."

The bushy-headed brunette's eyes shot up at his greeting, and she stared at him in silence for a moment before she finally demanded, "What do you want?"

"I just wondered if I could join you," he said after a pause of his own. Where was her aggression coming from? He had never done anything that would have hurt her feelings. "I figured we could talk about a few things."

Nearly dying had a way of changing one's perspective in more ways than one; he knew this from his own experience at the hands of the Chaeris slavers, and his fight with the vampire in Paris when he saved Aimée and Margaux only hammered that point in farther. Adding in that they were both social pariahs, and he could not help but see the similarities piling up. If neither of them had any friends here, why couldn't they be friends for each other?

Sadly, she did not see things the same way. "Well, I don't want to talk to you!" she snapped. The book she was reading, along with the roll of parchment and quill she was using to take notes, vanished into her bag, and she was running away from him toward the entrance before he could do more than call out her name.

Harry stared at the doorway for a couple of seconds before his head fell onto the table's surface with a dull thump. That reaction was very familiar; it was almost exactly how Hannah had acted after his first botched attempt to talk to Sally-Anne. "She thought I was going to mock her, didn't she?"

"It is a distinct likelihood," agreed Lash. "I had hoped that with her being socially isolated as you are and also having grown up in the nonmagical world, she would not have absorbed the same bias about keeping apart from the other Houses and about Slytherins being evil by default. It seems that was a miscalculation on my part."

A dark chuckle slipped out his mouth. "I can almost see why that stereotype might have persisted for so long. If every time you try to be nice, people assume you're a bully and run away, who else do you have to hang out with except the very bullies who are the source of the stereotype in the first place? It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy."

"What will you do now?" she asked. He shrugged, and then he could only sigh as her thin fingers buried themselves in his mop of hair. "Harry?"

"I make do however I can. I guess I'm kind of friends with Sally-Anne, Hannah, and Susan, and even if not, I have you. I'll still be nice to people; I'm not going to turn into a bully." Sitting up straight, he reached out and wrapped his hand around the one Lash had been using to comfort him. She offered him an encouraging smile. "Who knows? Maybe if I'm nice enough, people will eventually get it through their skulls that they're being idiots."

It wasn't like the entire student body would continue acting off their early assumptions when it became obvious they were horribly wrong. Right?

* * *

**Ah, the butterflies that small (or not-so-small) changes can unleash. Harry wasn't necessary for Ron to insult Hermione, so she was still in the bathroom with the troll, but since he was the only person who remembered she was there, that he wasn't there because he's in Slytherin and didn't know she was missing means she landed in serious, serious trouble.**

**In Faery Heroes, Umbridge kicked Harry off the Quidditch team. In the Black Queen series, Jen has no interest in the sport. Here, Harry finds watching it to be boring even though playing it might be fun. If you're seeing a pattern here, congratulations! Yes, these decisions are all based on the fact that I found the Quidditch scenes in canon to be mind-numbingly boring. I can barely be motivated to flip the TV to my alma mater's football games, let alone waste my time writing about a fictional sport.**

**If you couldn't tell from the ending of last chapter and this one, I will be trying out some different things in this story. Some of them might work, some of them might not. The changes for this year won't be all that drastic because Harry missed his two big chances to be more than peripherally involved in the Philosopher's Stone plot, but once summer rolls around, be prepared for anything to happen.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	19. The Invisibility Cloak

**I hope everyone had a merry Christmas and has a happy New Year's! Also, a special thanks goes out to Auctor for coming up with this chapter's disclaimer.**

**Disclaimer:** Did the Dursleys send a fifty-pence piece to Harry for Christmas his first year of Hogwarts, yet when they were getting a deluge of acceptance letters they never thought to send a rejection letter? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 19  
****The Invisibility Cloak**

In what seemed like no time at all, November had flown away to leave December in its place, and with that change came all the familiar and not-so-familiar trappings of the Christmas season. Once the second week of the month ended, garlands of holly and mistletoe grew seemingly out of the stone walls of the castle, and overnight a dozen fir trees popped into existence in the Great Hall, each decorated in a different way: some with traditional ornaments like baubles and tinsel while others had fairies posing prettily or multicolored flames that never consumed the tree's needles or even real tropical fruits for some reason that no one could explain. That last one had to be replaced regularly because many students had a bad habit of picking them to eat with their breakfasts and lunches.

It was also, unfortunately, a time that invited everyone to talk about their plans for the holiday season, a subject that Harry found he had no interest in. Yes, he could head back to Privet Drive if he wanted to, but Christmas was the one time of year when the illusion of the normal family they all lived under was strained to the breaking point. That was not to say that the psychomancy he had performed on them weakened; no, they treated him with the same consideration and decency that they always did. But that was the problem, for their was no joy in the way they treated him, not like there was with Dudley. There was just something, some undefinable quality, that was lacking. It was in this special season that it was most obvious that their behavior was due solely to him mucking about in their heads and twisting them into parodies of who they really were.

That those parodies were still far better than the people they had been before made it all the more surreal and depressing.

So no, Harry was not going back to Privet Drive for the winter holiday this year. He would stay in the castle and see for himself just how different wizarding Christmases were from nonmagical ones, although with what he had seen so far, he doubted there would be many differences beyond the superficial details. It did not need to be said that this was just a further disappointment in what was already turning out to be a lackluster holiday.

If there was one positive to being in Slytherin, it was that the dorms were practically deserted this time of year. The vast majority of the House of Snakes had flitted away, the only stragglers besides him being a few fifth- and seventh-years who spent their days in the library studying for their big end-of-year exams, which meant he had the run of the common room. Anyone walking in would have been surprised at the way he took advantage of this: a book in his hands from which he was reading, and arrayed on the tables he had moved into his field of vision anywhere from six to ten books that he would flip ahead in using a minor charm he had read about. It was apparently meant to be used as a prank on bookworms by turning the pages of whatever book they were reading before they were ready, but he and Lash agreed that this was a far more productive use for it.

Now if only he could make Madam Pince stop glaring at him every time he went into the library to return all the books he had checked out the previous day and grab some new ones.

Christmas day dawned bright and clear, and the sun had already been up for several hours before Harry finally dragged himself out of bed. He had stayed up extremely late the previous night listening to Lash tell him the real story of that first Christmas, including a number of amusing and embarrassing events that no one had thought important enough to include in the Scriptures, and as a result he had needed the extra sleep to recover. It was too late for breakfast, he decided, but if he took a long shower and finished the book he had left on the couch by the fire, he should be done by the time lunch was ready in the Great—

His foot landed on something squishy and slippery, and it slid out from under him to send him falling face-first onto the ground.

"Ow," he muttered into the thick rug he had luckily landed on. Picking himself up, he looked around for whatever the offending object was, and his eyes fell upon a lumpy package wrapped up in blindingly bright yellow and purple paper. How in the world had he missed that?! He should just be glad no one had noticed his embarrassing clumsiness.

"How could you possibly not have seen that, Harry?"

…No one human, at least. "I'm tired," he complained. "And what are you wearing?"

His angel shrugged her shoulders, the movement shifting the red dress with white fur she wore. As appropriate for the season it would have been otherwise, this looked more like an Indian sari than something out of Mrs. Claus's closet. "What? I felt like trying something different."

"Uh-huh. Sure."

She rolled her eyes and waved toward the lone gift waiting for him. "Are you going to open that any time soon?"

Right. He needed to get his priorities in order. Presents first, then shower and food. A quick tug ripped open the paper, but to his surprise what fell out was not the sweater he had halfway expected after stepping on it. No, this was a swath of some silvery grey cloth, and sticking out from one fold was the corner of a letter. Harry pulled the mass of fabric into his lap so he could reach the note more easily.

_Your father left this in my possession before he died_, read the narrow, loopy writing. _It is time it was returned to you. Use it well._

There was no signature.

"Harry?" Lash asked, her voice filled with interest. "Take a look at your legs."

Confused by her tone, he tried and failed to follow her directions, and his surprise overwhelmed his curiosity as to the gift's sender. "Where _are_ my legs?"

He prodded the empty space where he was sure his newest present and the rest of his body had been a second ago, and he was not a little relieved to feel the same slick material he had previously held resting upon a harder lump that was supposed to be his knee. As soon as he picked the cloth up, everything shimmered back into visibility.

"That could be very useful," muttered the angel. "It would depend on whether you can see out while under it and whether the brooch holding it closed would be invisible as well, but I can think of several uses for an artifact like this. No need to cast and maintain a Veil when you could just wear one instead."

Harry looked under his bed and around him for another moment before sitting down on the ground. "I guess so," he muttered.

"What is the matter?" He shrugged, and then he reached out to steady himself when he felt the floor shift beneath him. A glance down showed that the space separating him and the cold stone floor had expanded to allow a pair of legs to fit between, and if he had any doubts about who the owner of said legs was, they were put to rest when two arms reached around his front and pulled him backward into her chest. "Harry, I cannot read your mind. If you want me to know what troubles you, you have to tell me."

The smile that crossed his face was sad, and he leaned into Lash's embrace to delay the inevitable for a moment longer. She rested her chin on the top of his head in response; not pushing for an answer, but he doubted he would be able to manage his way out before telling her what she wanted to know. "It's Christmas, but there's only one present here, and it doesn't have a name on it."

"Yes, it is a bit of a disappointing sight," she agreed, "but I suspect that gift is far more valuable than many others you could have received instead, both monetarily and practically. As for the lack of signature, I can think of a number of reasons why he or she might want to keep his identity a secret. Perhaps the sender was embarrassed that he had kept it for so long, or perhaps instead that it was in his hands when your parents died when it would have been so obviously useful should they have tried to escape. By returning it to you anonymously, he soothes his conscience and avoids the blame he fears you would assign him should you meet in person."

He shook his head. "That's not what I meant. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. They never gave me much, not as much as they did Dudley, but they did give me something. They didn't this year."

"Ah. Yes." She sighed and gave his entrapped body a squeeze. "I think I might know the reason for that, too. Before, you were always there to remind them of your presence. Now that you have been gone for so many months, it is possible that the thought to send you anything simply slipped their minds."

Harry's laugh was short and sharp. "Of course. They don't like me, not really, no matter how much they act like it. That's just the spell I put them under. Of course as soon as I disappear, they pretend I don't exist."

"I highly doubt it was an intentional decision on their part."

"I don't think it was, either, but that just makes it worse," he insisted while blinking away the water gathering in his eyes. "The spell makes them act a certain way, but now they can act more like they naturally would, and naturally to them means to ignore the 'freak' like they did before I took that option away from them. I'm not really part of their family; I never was. Just the kind of thing I wanted to think about on Christmas."

Lash said nothing. She just sat there and held him close.

* * *

"Sniff them out, my sweet."

A bolt of liquid lightning slipped down Harry's spine when those whispered words slipped into his ears. With a mutter of "_Gisher_", the ball of pale light in his hand vanished to plunge the library into darkness, and he took an extra step and pulled the hood of his cloak over his head. The amazing fabric he had received just that morning was so large that he had to fold it multiple times if he wanted to actually wear the thing rather than just walk around with it held over his head like a sheet, but once sufficiently folded, he had discovered that it stuck to itself rather than need a pin to hold it closed, almost as though it understood how he wanted to wear it.

Lash had said following that discovery that she was rapidly getting tired of every random object in this magical world having the intelligence of most small animals.

Even with the shadows hiding his invisible form, Harry nonetheless stood still once he slipped off the bench he had been sitting on. That voice belonged to Filch, the castle's caretaker, but Filch was not the problem. His cat, Mrs. Norris, was. For all that Harry was invisible, he had not cast any spell on himself to erase his scent, and he had been sitting in the library flipping through books for Lash's later perusal for over an hour. There was no way that cat wouldn't be able to find out that he was there, and Filch had somehow trained her to quash her inherent feline indifference and follow commands just like any normal dog.

Thankfully, his readings had not been just for Lash's benefit. As soon as the scrawny, dust-colored creature walked into view, he pointed his finger at her. "_Confundo_."

Mrs. Norris staggered when the unseeable spell washed over her, and then she glanced around in confusion just like he wanted her to do. Yes, wandering around the castle and holing up in the library after curfew was against the rules, but honestly Harry had a hard time feeling guilty about using magic to send the caretaker and his pet on their way. He wasn't doing anything wrong other than being up; he wasn't setting off pranks or defacing the books or slipping into the Restricted Section. He was just getting books for Lash.

Sure enough, the cat wandered off without signaling her human to come investigate, and he let out the breath he had not realized he was holding. This was not the first time he had almost been caught, nor the second or third. By now, tricking the pair into believing he was not there had become nearly routine. That did not make each encounter any less harrowing, however. He had heard rumors of how Filch tried to punish students he caught out of bounds, and while he could handle detentions and lost points, being clapped in chains and hanging from his wrists for the entire night? No thanks.

"I hate that cat."

"Do not hate the cat," chided Lash. "She has done nothing to you, nor any other student. All she wants is to please her master. If you want your hate to be productive, direct it at Filch, instead."

He turned to the angel, his eyebrows raised in surprise. "I didn't know you were so fond of animals."

A moment passed while she thought that over. "I am, yes. Animals are honest. They have no motives, no conflicting plans. Once properly trained, they do what they are told. They love simply and without reservation. I would not wish to inhabit one, but had I a corporeal body, I would love to have a pet of my own."

"So," he said with a grin, "are you a cat person or a dog person?"

"Cats. Without a doubt, cats." She smiled back at him, his invisibility no barrier to her as she was there in his head with him. "I have always found their self-sufficiency and aloofness amusing. And as you saw, they are no less eager to please once they consider you theirs."

"Of all the guardian angels I could possibly get, it just had to be the crazy cat lady," he teased.

"Hush, you. Those books will not read themselves." She snapped her wrist, and the sound of a bullwhip cracking right next to his ear echoed deafeningly in the silence. "Get back to work."

* * *

Watching her host hover a few feet above the deserted Quidditch pitch and supported by nothing more than a short branch, Lash had to reevaluate the wisdom of helping Harry enchant his flying broomstick.

Not that this was a true broomstick. It was more a proof of concept, really. The spells they had worked out should be sufficient to keep him in the air without worrying too much about stability, but until they tested it, they had no way of knowing how successful they had been. It was not too surprising in hindsight, but they had had a most frustrating time researching just how brooms were enchanted; with it being an apparently profitable enterprise, they should have expected that no information would be found in a school library. The closest they had managed was an out-of-print copy of _Quidditch Through the Ages_ that went into a little more detail than subsequent editions did on the theory of broom flight and the spells necessary to turn that theory into reality.

Still, that was useful enough as a starting point, even if she had spent more nights than she was willing to count reworking the calculations for the forces that would need to be exerted on the broom and rider when her previous set turned out to be a recipe for splattering her host all over the castle's wall. Harry had then done the physical work of carving the runes she told him onto the shaft of wood he now rode. And it really was just a shaft of wood; there were a few twigs tied to the back of the device that served as 'vents' for the propulsive and stabilizing forces, but much of the runework was on the main stick, which had previously been just a branch laying on the ground near the edge of the Forbidden Forest. If these calculations proved to be the right ones, she had suggested that they head to an old growth forest on the Continent, perhaps even back to the Black Forest, and once there they could find pieces of wood with greater inherent power to use for the final product.

"Okay. Okay, this could work," Harry said, breaking her from her reflections. He squeezed the branch with his thighs to coax it into forward motion, but he only flew a few feet before pulling it to a halt. "We need to work on the stabilization. This is not comfortable at all."

She frowned. "The side-to-side shaking or the bouncing?"

"Both?"

"The bouncing we can probably negate with a better Cushioning Charm," she thought aloud. "You keep looking for it in the library, and I will see if I cannot redesign the one we already had. I was sure repelling your body a set distance from the shaft would do the trick, but there are other options I can explore. The sideways motion should resolve itself once you have more twigs on the back. How is the acceleration?"

"That's a good question. Let me find out." Whereas his first attempt had been no faster than walking speed, now he urged the broom to go faster. That, unfortunately, took a while, and Harry was frowning by the time it finally started moving at faster than what a human was capable of when sprinting. "Attuning this more should make it move faster and get up to speed sooner, shouldn't it?"

"I would expect so."

"I guess I better attune this one a while before we start working on the real one. I don't want to go through the trouble of making it look nice and then find out we need to redo the runes." Coming to a stop, he could not hide the smile peeking out. "But it works. It needs some work still, but the important thing is that it works."

"Indeed it does. And since you are already out here…"

An array of colored squares appeared in his field of vision, red on one side and blue on the opposite. None of them faced him directly but instead were tilted in a variety of directions, and just to make things interesting, she had strewn white planes and cubes throughout. "Er, nice?" he finally tried. "Is this a new exercise or something?"

She nodded. "Indeed it is. Tell me, Harry, have you noticed anything strange about your fireballs the last few times you have practiced with them?"

"You mean besides the fact that they explode?" he returned with a grin.

"I would not say they 'explode', per se," she answered. "Expand, yes, but not explode. But no, that is not to what I was referring. Ignore the spells that hit their targets. What about the spells that miss?"

"I really wasn't paying attention," Harry admitted.

She rolled her eyes but said nothing in response. That really was not such a surprise, though it was mildly disappointing. She needed to work with him more on his situational awareness, it would seem. "Very well. They do not expand when they hit the ground, nor do they just come to a halt and fade away. No, they roll along their merry way for another couple of seconds; a few have even bounced a short distance. Only once they slowed to a stop did they burst.

"In my old world, every wizard develops his combat spells differently. Some use straight-line attacks; others focus on an attribute only tangentially related to the base spell. If you can send a fire spell around corners?" Her smile was anything but friendly. "Oh, the opportunities this creates for you."

Harry jerked back when a yellow ball appeared in front of him without warning, though after a moment's hesitation he reached out and took it. Her own abilities might be limited to illusions that only her host could see, but so long as she stayed within those parameters, there were still any number of useful tricks she could play. Creating illusionary objects that interacted with all his senses to the point that he could manipulate them as though they were physical? Child's play.

"So yes, this is a training exercise. What I want you to do is take that ball and bounce it so it hits the red side of the squares. You can deflect it off the ground or the white objects I have provided. For every red square you hit, you will receive a point, but if you hit a blue square, I will take away a point. You are trying to take advantage of the angles available to you, so I will not award you any points if you hit a target without bouncing the ball off another object first. Nor will I take away points for that, however; in real combat, a hit is a hit regardless of whether or not it was a direct attack. Let us see how well you do."

Gripping his broomstick tight, Harry shot her a nod and started flying around the pitch.

* * *

Albus's pocket watch closed with a loud snap, and the wizard in question glanced over at the partially open door he was waiting beside. The Notice-Me-Not he had cast upon himself earlier that night had proven to be unnecessary; none of the few students left in the castle had wandered past this night or any other, especially not the one he had desperately hoped would do so. No, despite him sending the Cloak of Invisibility back to its rightful owner, Harry Potter had not taken the opportunity to explore this area of the castle in the dead of night.

Walking into the room, he waved his wand and made the cloth laying on the floor rise up to cover the ornate mirror standing in the middle of the room. The Mirror of Erised was not an artefact he would normally leave unattended in an abandoned classroom, but desperate times called for desperate measures. He had hoped that, in the months following Harry's Sorting, Harry would grow disgusted with the attitude of his Housemates and would seek out companionship in other Houses, maybe even Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs to spite the rest of the Slytherins; he had feared that Harry would fit right in and take the reins of the Snake Pit the way Tom had.

Both of those outcomes, hero or villain, Albus could work with. But neither had come to pass. Young Harry was, for lack of a better word, apathetic. He stuck to himself, not interacting with the other Slytherins, yet neither did he reach out. He seemed completely content to be on his own.

And that was a problem, for regardless of what Harry Potter wanted, he had a part to play in the war that was to come.

He pulled off his half-moon glasses, the lenses charmed for the moment with a _Homenum Revelio _so he could find someone trying to sneak about unseen, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. What would motivate a boy who cared not for interactions with any other person into working for the continued peace and safety of the rest of the country? What arguments or logic could move such an inwardly focused individual into acting for the benefit of the world outside? That question had chased itself around and around in his head ever since it had become obvious that arranging Harry and Tom's reunion would take more work that he had previously expected, and even now, he had no answers.

Enter the Mirror of Erised. The Mirror was capable of revealing the deepest, most heartfelt desires of the one who stared into its depths, and through watching and listening to Harry's reactions, he should be able to piece together what it was for that boy. Would it be something base like riches or fame? Evil like power over others and pleasure at their pain? Noble like lost family or companionship or romantic love? Knowing someone's desires allowed for others to find the right carrot and the right stick to send him where he was needed, and as degrading as it felt to be left skulking along empty corridors in the hopes that natural childish curiosity would win out, it was still better than the other alternatives left to him. He was capable of digging through people's minds, but that did not mean he liked to do so, nor did he resort to any but the most benign aspects of that ability when there were more palatable options open to him.

He had run out of time, however. The students were scheduled to return to the castle the very next day, and the Mirror was too dangerous to be left out where just anyone could stumble upon it and be caught up in visions of their desires. Wizards and witches many times the children's age had been trapped by the Mirror and then wasted away to the point of death if they were lucky. If they were unlucky, they survived but were driven mad by the experience. When his target was one child whom he was waiting and watching for, the risks of such a fate could be mitigated, but once classes were back in session, he would not have the time to keep innocents away from it.

No, it had to go back into his office, and from there to the end of the obstacle course. But only after he placed the Philosopher's Stone inside it, of course; if he could not guarantee that Harry would follow the trail of breadcrumbs he had left, then perhaps he could let Tom fall into the same trap that had ensnared so easily. Maybe, just maybe, it would even mean Harry could complete his education, kill his destined foe, and continue on to lead a happy and productive life rather than die for the people like a sacrificial lamb!

Oh, Albus could only hope so.

* * *

Sally-Anne stumbled to a halt when her school bag was suddenly jerked downward and away from her. Her heart leapt into her throat and tried to beat its way out her mouth and down the hall, but immediately she took a deep breath, then another. _Ten, nine, eight, seven_, she counted silently, giving herself time to calm down like her therapist was always telling her she needed to do. If she couldn't keep her anxiety under control by herself, he'd put her back on the pills, and those left her feeling so foggy and heavy that she had promised herself she would never take them again, no matter how well they kept her panic attacks away!

Once she no longer had the near-irrepressible urge to run away screaming – not that the urge wasn't still there; it was just no longer overpowering – she turned her head to glance over both shoulders. Nothing behind her on the left, just her fellow Badgers. Nothing behind her on the— No, there was someone there watching her.

Thankfully, it was one of the few people she knew for a fact she didn't need to fear.

Pulling away hastily when a hand landed on her shoulder, she gave Justin Finch-Fletchley a tight smile. "It's nothing," she told him when he still looked at her with unwanted – _Don't look! If you look too hard, they'll find me!_ – curiosity. She gulped down the lump that had formed in her throat. "Just, just forgot my quill in Professor Quirrell's room."

"Okay," he said, and now Hannah and Susan were looking at her, too! "Do you want me to go back with you?"

Her laugh was too high. They would suspect her of something if she kept giving it away! "A-After an entire term, I think I know where the Great Hall is. I'll be down for lunch in just a minute." That seemed to satisfy them, and she watched as they walked away and left her behind. Another breath to fortify her courage and she turned around. "Hey, Harry."

The bespectacled boy slipped out of the shadows; even with his black hair and robes, how could he hide so well? "Hey, yourself," he returned with an easy smile, the kind of smile she envied. He was on the ship, too. How could he recover so totally from that while she was a nervous wreck? Was it that he hadn't watched those strange wizards, those Obliviators, attack them? Or was he just a stronger person than she was? "Did you have a nice Christmas?"

Oh, God, she hadn't given him anything! Was he going to yell at her for forgetting about him? But he hadn't sent her anything, either, so maybe it wasn't that? "G-Good. It was good. What about yours?"

"Eh, not going to complain about it." Harry raised his head to look over her shoulder, and then he glanced over his own before she had a chance to worry that he had spotted someone sneaking up from behind. "I was actually wondering if you had heard any rumors about why Granger didn't show up for the new term Sunday."

"Granger? Why are you wondering? Not that you shouldn't," she hastily added, "but I didn't know you were friends with her."

He shook his head. "I'm not, but I am a little worried about her. We both know that having monsters attack you isn't something you get over in a month."

No, no it wasn't. Wait, did he mean he wasn't over being kidnapped by those Chaeris pirates? Either way, that wasn't the point. "I've heard some rumors, but no one really _knows_ what the reason is. A bunch of people have said that she was already planning on withdrawing because she doesn't have any friends, even before the thing with the troll, but I don't know how true they are."

"That's about what I expected," he said with a sigh. "Not that I can blame her, really. You heard that even her own Housemates didn't seem to care, didn't you?"

"Yes, I did. That was awful." Harry nodded in agreement, and they stood around awkwardly for several seconds. "Well, I have to go to lunch…"

"Oh. Yeah, of course," the boy said with a faint laugh. "I just wanted to ask about that and make sure you had a good holiday. Glad to hear you did."

"Mm-hmm," she said again. "I'll see you in class Thursday?"

"Sure."

He waved at her and walked past, and when she was sure he was gone she slapped her hands over her face. _'I'll see you in class_'? Who said stuff like that?! And why didn't she suggest they walk down to lunch together; it wasn't like they weren't going to the same place!

A long huff escaped her while she dragged her hands down her cheeks. If she couldn't even hold a conversation with him when it was just the two of them in the hallways, how was she ever going to say hello to him in class in front of everyone? Harry was the only friend she had both in Hogwarts and in the Muggle world, and she wanted to spend some time with him that summer if she could. Her parents would be thrilled to learn that she had a friend who didn't live in what was practically a whole other country within the same borders, even if he was a boy, but she needed to be able to ask him to come visit and meet her parents, and she couldn't do that if she was too nervous to talk to him for more than a couple of minutes at a time!

Okay, she knew what she had to do. She was going to talk to him in class on Thursday. Nodding to herself, she turned around and walked toward the main staircase. Sure, she had planned to talk to him in front of their Housemates before now, and none of those promises had become reality, but maybe Thursday would be different. Maybe.

* * *

**Writing someone with rampant anxiety issues is new one for me, and not a mood disorder I have any personal experience with. For anyone who does have a panic disorder or social anxiety, was I close or way off the mark?**

**Silently Watches out.**


	20. The Dark Lord

**Disclaimer:** Despite him having been the Muggle Studies professor at Hogwarts for several years in the eighties, did none of the other Hogwarts staff think it odd that Quirrell suddenly developed a stutter after he returned from his sabbatical year to take the DADA post? If not, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 20  
****The Dark Lord**

"Gah!" With a grunt of frustration, Harry crumpled up the sheet of parchment he had been scrawling on and pitched it into the corner to join the pile of its fellows already there. "This should not be this hard!"

"Did you expect it to be easy?" He turned his head to scowl at the angel lying indolently on his bed. "You are taking runes meant to hold intent and twisting them to work with emotion, instead. This was always going to be difficult."

She had a point, just like she always did, and that did little to soothe his irritation. After much procrastination, in this case lasting all the way to the start of March, he had started working on attuning his emotion-based wizarding wand. He had thankfully gone through the exercises Lash had told him about so he could actually use the rune he had created to represent the emotional energy he needed to cast his spells and that this wand was supposed to store, so all he had to do was start on the actual attuning.

It was not going well.

Or, perhaps more accurately, it worked perfectly well, just not in the manner he needed it to work. He had tested the rune with a few small rocks he had picked up off the grounds, and the results had been disheartening. If he was trying to store emotion, it served its purposes admirably; to his sixth sense, the stones he had carved that script onto sang in a similar ever-changing pitch to the one his wand had, a sign that his spell was active and effective. The problem came when he tried to use that rune for anything else. No matter how he phrased the script, nothing came from it.

He could store emotion just as he could energy of other kinds, but that was all. He couldn't even pull his emotion back into himself!

Slumping in his chair, he shook his head. "That's it. I've tried everything I can think of, but no matter what I do, it doesn't work. My emotions go in, they don't come back out, and I can't do anything with what I have. I am officially out of ideas."

Lash broke apart only to reappear standing next to him. "So you can only store emotional energy. That is fine. Rather than continue to beat your head against the same wall time and time again, why not go around it? There must be some way we can use this to create a solution."

"Good luck finding one."

Silence reigned in the room for several minutes, and then the angel spoke again out of the blue. "Harry, what if we are looking at this all wrong?"

"What do you mean?"

"Your wand does not just use emotional energy. It can also draw it from an outside source and stores it in its core. There is no reason we could not use that aspect of its nature to our advantage," she said with a shrug.

"Except we can't use an object we've stored emotion in as the base of a focus. The intent overwrites the storage." That was the only benefit to their experimentation that Harry could see. He had worried that being able to store emotions would make it possible for his foci to self-cast, but it looked like the balance of intent versus emotion was limited to one or another for inanimate objects. "If we're going to use this wand as more than a prop, we can't turn it into a battery."

For all that he could do every spell in his repertoire without a wand, Lash had been very insistent on that point. He had even admitted that she had a good reason for it once she explained her thoughts, however grudgingly that admission might have been given. A number of her previous human partners had at one time or another been in fights where they used too much of their magic and were left mentally drained, their emotional reserves worn down to nothing by repeated casting. He himself had experienced that same phenomenon on the slavers' ship after setting the boat on fire. If, however, he had a focus he could use for all his spells that had its own separate pool of emotion to draw from, he had a far greater chance of escaping whatever battle had put him in that state in the first place.

But no matter how good an idea it was, it meant little if he could not do it.

"That is not what I was suggesting at all," she denied. "Your wand drains emotional energy, but who says it has to be from you? Connect the wand to a battery, and then all you need to do is feed power into the battery for it to become available to the wand."

He blinked in surprise and maybe a little befuddlement. That was not a bad idea, but he had no idea how he was supposed to do that. "And how do you think I'll be able to connect the wand and the battery?"

"Why, that is rather simple." She smiled, the expression stolen from a cat that had both a canary and a bowl of cream within paws' reach. "You attune them."

Harry shook his head in disbelief. "Let me get this straight. Instead of attuning my wand to me with my emotions instead of intent, you want me to attune my wand to another focus… with my emotions instead of intent. How does that make this any easier?!"

"You already have the means to do that. It was the exact problem we faced in the beginning." He just stared at her in complete confusion. "You recast the spell to automatically attune the wand, just as it was when you first bought the wand. The difference is that instead of leaving one 'end' of the spell free where it can attach itself to you, you anchor the spell on the wand and then connect it to whatever you are using as the battery. The wand drains the battery, and then all you have to do is reattune the battery to recharge it." Her smile widened into a smirk. "And there is a secondary benefit to this method. Recall that the 'auto-attuning' spell attunes both the focus and the caster, but in this case you are attaching the spell to a focus you have to attune manually in order to fuel. By establishing that intermediate step, you can keep pulling the battery closer to you and thereby drag the wand along with it, which would indirectly attune the wand to you."

That explanation was anything but clear, but after a moment of thought he just nodded. If she said it would work, he had little reason to doubt her. "I'll take your word for it."

"It will work. And even if it does not," she added thoughtfully, "you can just nullify the attunement spell and implement a different solution, and the wand will not be damaged. Of course, we need to figure out what to use as a battery. This would almost certainly work best if it and the wand were always near each other, or even in physical contact, but it also needs to be something—"

An idea popped into Harry's head, and he shoved his hand into his bottomless pouch until he pulled out the bag of silver scraps he had traded for from the dwarves. "I've got it. We need a ring."

"A ring?"

"Mm-hmm. We turn the ring into the battery— Aha!" he cheered as he found a roughly forged circle of silver, and then he slid it down the length of the wand. "And then we just slip it on. It's small, easily overlooked, and it would stay in constant contact. I'd have to reshape it, obviously, make it smaller so it fits nice and snug around the shaft and doesn't fall off without a good, hard tug. Maybe use that trick one of the smiths showed me to darken it so fewer people notice it and call me out on it— Lash, what's wrong?"

The angel shook her head, her eyes squeezed shut and one hand over her mouth. After a moment, she pulled her hand away to reveal a wide smile. "Nothing, Harry. It is nothing. I was just thinking how precious it is that you are still so indescribably innocent. Please, continue."

"That's about it, really."

"Very well." She gave him a sympathetic frown. "Just like you did when preparing to craft your ghosting ring, you will need to practice writing your runes small enough to fit on that tiny bit of space."

"Ugh, why'd you remind me?" he said. Then he sighed. Oh, well. It was hard work, but if it solved his problems, he would just have to put his nose to the grindstone and get through it.

* * *

The man blinked once, twice.

Then he looked down at his hands and stared in disbelief. He was, somehow, sitting in a dingy bar with a glass of whiskey to his right and five playing cards in his hand. That in and of itself was not a problem; he was not exactly good at poker, but he had played it from time to time with some old friends and always found it enjoyable. No, the problem was that he should not be in a bar playing poker at all! He had developed a headache and had crawled into his bed just after dinner in hopes of sleeping through it, in the process putting off the work he knew he needed to do until tomorrow. How in Merlin's name had he managed to get from his quarters to this place?!

"Hey, it's your bet."

He glanced up to see another man staring at him, or at least he thought was staring at him. It was hard to tell when the speaker and everyone else were all wearing billowing hoods that hid their faces. A stray breeze pushed a bit of cloth into view, and he knew he could not think anything derogatory about their choice of fashion when he wore the same thing.

His hands shook faintly when he set his cards face-down and shook his head. Standing up from the table, he ignored the man yelling after him and the small number of chips that lay near his glass and staggered away. Out the door, into the rain, down the street, his hood swiftly pulled down to let the cool rain pelt his face. Where was he? How had he gotten here? Those were the questions that plagued his mind until he caught sight of the warm and, more importantly, familiar façade of the Three Broomsticks.

He was in Hogsmeade. He didn't know why his latest bout of sleepwalking had carried him all the way here, nor how he had managed to play a game of poker while unconscious, but clearly his recently developed problem was not getting better on its own. The episodes were happening closer together now, and while he had halfway expected them to last longer as they had done, this was the first time he had ever gone this far afield. It was actually rather disconcerting.

Summer, he decided. He would wait until summer, and if his problem had still persisted, he would need to move beyond the basic potions he was already taking for this issue and go to St. Mungo's to see if he could get any advice from a specialist. Admittedly, it was only March now, so he had three months to go, but it was not as if he could take off for a few weeks to straighten everything out now. He might not have a job by the time he came back if he tried that.

Pulling his cloak more tightly about himself, he frowned when one side hung low and pulled out the large and oblong rock that had weighed it down. He shrugged and tossed it into the alley next to where he had stopped. Maybe some alley cat could figure out what to do with the smooth stone, but that really was not his concern.

No, his concern was going back to bed, and this time locking his door more securely. He needed to get some rest if he wanted to be at all coherent tomorrow.

* * *

The spring term passed in a blur of classes, homework, and attuning, and soon enough the Easter holidays were upon them. Harry appreciated the break, but he was more interested in the notice that appeared on the board on that Friday morning.

**CAREER ADVICE  
**_All fifth years will be required to attend a short meeting with their Head of House during  
__the first week of the summer term, in which they will be given the opportunity to discuss  
__their future careers. Times of individual appointments are listed below._

The list was irrelevant; what mattered was the stack of pamphlets and booklets that had spread to cover no fewer than seven tables in the Slytherin common room. Even more interesting was the fact that the majority of them were untouched. Were the older members of the House that uninterested in what careers might await them, or instead had they all decided on what they wanted and this information was meant for the few who had yet to make up their minds?

Whatever the reason was, their apathy meant they did not seem to care when he walked over and snatched a few for his own reading.

"Let's see," he muttered to himself once he was back in the safety of his dorm. What kind of careers were possible for fully trained wizards? "Healer… Okay, that's the same thing as a doctor. Potions, Herbology, Transfiguration, Charms, and Defense Against the Dark Arts. You have to be good at everything to go into medicine, I suppose."

"That is little different from normal medicine," pointed out Lash.

"Fair enough." The next leaflet was an eye-rending orange with pink letters, and he had to squint to read it. "Muggle Relations. I guess that's handling incidents where magical society intersects with the wider world." He blinked and asked, "OWLs come before NEWTs, right?"

She nodded. "OWLs at the end of fifth year, NEWTs in seventh."

"This only requires an OWL in Muggle Studies." Skimming through the text again, he nodded. "Yeah, that's it. One class for a total of three years."

"Considering how little some of your classmates understand the mortal world, either the class is exceptional at teaching what they need to know or anyone entering this position would be woefully unprepared."

"And those are the people who would keep this society hidden?" He shook his head and glanced at the next one. "_'Have you got what it takes to train security trolls?'_ I'm going to say no."

One pamphlet a few after that, however, caught his eye. "_'Are you seeking a challenging career involving travel, adventure, and substantial, danger-related treasure bonuses? Then consider a position with Gringotts Wizarding Bank, who are currently recruiting Curse-Breakers for thrilling opportunities abroad.'_ That could be interesting."

"You find _'danger-related treasure bonuses'_ to be interesting?" Lash prompted. "Who are you, and what have you done to my Harry?"

"Yes, it sounds like it could be interesting." She still did not look convinced, so he said the three enticing words that had echoed in his head as soon as he read the description. "Magical Indiana Jones. Just with lots fewer Nazis."

"God save me from boys and their toys and their machismo."

He snickered a little at her put-upon tone of voice. "Requirements… NEWTs in Defense Against the Dark Arts, Arithmancy, Charms, Care of Magical Creatures, and an OWL in History of Magic. Not as much as Healers or that Auror group, but still pretty intense. I guess they would have to be smart if they go around raiding trapped tombs."

"Stupidity or absent-mindedness would be deadly characteristics to possess if you make a living by putting your life on the line," she agreed after a moment.

Harry glanced through several more leaflets, but just as his lingering excitement about the possibility of becoming an action hero–archeologist–wizard was fading somewhat, Lash spoke again. "That is odd."

"What?"

"Look over these careers again. Tell me what you think is missing."

Flipping through the pamphlets, he did notice what she meant. No architects, no solicitors, no engineers. Some of the careers sounded like they could be similar – enchanters and artificers, for instance, were described in way that made it possible they were similar to engineers and inventors – but many others sounded totally unique, and many careers he had heard of growing up did not were not represented in the pile he had grabbed. "Maybe there are more non-magical-sounding jobs in the pamphlets I didn't pick up?"

"That is a possibility," she agreed. "It might also be that whoever collected the pamphlets did not think those careers were impressive enough, and so the bias is not in the culture itself but the individual. I would recommend you switch these out for some others to check that the issue was not in how they were distributed, but if that proves unhelpful…" She trailed off before giving him a shrug. "It is something else for you to look up in the library before you choose your electives next year."

* * *

Final exams in Hogwarts were the strangest tests Harry had ever taken, something that should not have been as surprising as it was considering how odd the classes themselves were. Oh, the written portions were normal enough if he discounted the subject matter, but before this year he had never expected that he would have a teacher who graded him on how pretty the snuffbox he had transfigured from a mouse was, nor that he would be forced to spend one exam taking shallow breaths to avoid the fumes wafting off his Forgetfulness Potion. More than anything else, it was this awkward blend of the banal and the fantastic that made him wonder if he was hallucinating the entirety of Hogwarts.

Still, that was now over, and he had a week to spend however he wished before he was told his marks and whether he had done well enough to continue on to the second year. That, at least, was something he did not feel he had to worry about. If there were any benefits to being as socially isolated as he was, it was that he was left with plenty of time to revise, and even that was starting to look up; it might have taken a year, but finally Sally-Anne had given him a friendly wave as the gathered students left the room where they were taking their History of Magic exam, the last exam they had scheduled.

It was late in the night and Harry was leaving the library when he heard his name be called.

"Mr. Potter!" He turned around to find Professor Quirrell walking toward him, a smile on his face as he waved in greeting. "Still in the library, eh? All your exams are over, you know."

With a shrug, he gave the honest answer. "I didn't grow up in the magical world, Professor. There's still so much to learn, especially stuff that isn't covered in any of our classes." He smiled wistfully. "I really wish there was a class for people like me and the Muggleborns to introduce us into all the new and different things everyone else takes for granted."

"Yes, that would be helpful for many, Mr. Potter." The man's smile turned the slightest bit sharp at that, almost as if he found the comment darkly amusing. "But at the same time, have you not thought that your less traditional upbringing might not be to your advantage? If one is not blinded by the veil that hangs in front of all others' eyes, he can see the cracks and flaws and mistakes the rest of the populace ignores." Quirrell took a step closer, and Harry had to fight not to move away in response. It was a perfectly normal action, so why did he suddenly feel threatened? "It has always been that those who see the world in a new way are the ones to change it. Progress can only come about by throwing off the old ways of doing things."

"Yes, sir." Inside, though, his mind was whirling. What was he supposed to do when someone he really didn't know walked up to start a random discussion of philosophy? Well, the obvious answer was get away from the crazy person, and that was definitely a good start. "Well, I need to head back to my common room if I want to be inside by curfew. Have a good evening—"

"Oh, that is nothing to concern yourself with." This time he did take a step away when Quirrell approached him, and the man's eyes narrowed with clear anger even as his tone remained unchanged. "If you are with a professor, you have a pass. There are a few things I would very much like to discuss with you."

"Harry, this is not Quirrell," Lash told him. "He has not stuttered once during this entire conversation, and his word choice is all wrong. He is an imposter!"

Harry would have wondered how this could be an imposter when his sight anklet cut through all illusions, but the latest turn in this conversation was creepy enough that he really did not have any inclination to argue. He took several rapid steps down the hall away from the fake professor, and as soon as he saw the man drawing a wand from his pocket, he dropped all pretense of calm and started running.

"_Stupefy_!"

"_Vahan_!" A translucent, pale blue circle appeared between them, the view of the hallway behind distorted and stretched. A beam of red-purple light slammed into his shield and came out bright scarlet and flying at an angle that carried it away from Harry, but the boy still swallowed in fright. His shield spell worked by deflecting projectiles that came into it, but when he tested it with falling pebbles and sticks, they had been shifted farther away than that spell was. The jets of light spells manifested as were not physical like the rocks had been, and now he realized that meant he had to be far more careful defending himself.

Another spell of the same kind at him again, and Harry made his move. If defense was not enough, he would have to use offense to back it up. With his left hand and its silver-and-green shield bracelet aimed at the pretender, he pulled back with his right and flung it forward. "_Ayrvel_!"

The volleyball-sized burst of fire sailed from his hand and fell in a graceful but thankfully quick arc in not-Quirrell's direction. The wizard stopped casting spells at him to protect himself, and that was Harry's signal to move. He turned, his left hand pointed behind him, and then he ran as fast as his feet could carry him. He needed to get out of here and find somewhere to hide, perhaps even a teacher to tell about this intruder who was wearing Quirrell's face.

"_Accio_!" His shoes whipped out from under him toward the man, and without his legs under him, Harry fell face-first onto the unyielding stone floor. Pain lanced through his face and warm wetness spread over his cheeks, undoubtedly blood from his now-broken nose. With his concentration broken, the shield spell immediately fell apart.

"_Stupefy_."

* * *

Harry's eyelids were heavy and his back and elbows were sore when he drifted awake. "Muh?" was all he could get out while he slowly fought to come back to consciousness. His eyelids fluttered open to reveal a far-off wall made of rough stone and bulging outward; after a minute, his brain caught up with his eyes to suggest that from the way his back and legs were pressed against the stones behind him, maybe that strange wall was really the domed ceiling and he was lying down. That sounded like a perfectly reasonable explanation, so Harry tried to sit up.

The last scraps of sleep ran away screaming when he found that he could barely move.

Wiggling desperately, he finally turned his head enough to see the thick ropes that had been tied tightly around his body. His arms were pinned to his sides, and his legs had been lashed together, and that was without the additional cords that jumped from one rope to another to keep him from being able to curl up or shift around too much. If he wanted to get out of whatever situation he had landed in this time, those were the first things he needed to get rid of.

He snorted. Listen to him, sounding like someone who knew what he was doing when the truth was that he had only been in two truly dangerous situations, and with both the slavers and the vampire, he had barely escaped with his life.

"M-M-Mister P-Potter?" At that familiar stutter, he flicked his eyes over to the other side of the round room to find the real Quirrell likewise tied up and lying on the ground. "W-W-W-Where are we? How d-d-d-d-d-d-d—"

"I don't know where we are or how we got here," he answered, and thankfully the older man stopped his stuttering and just nodded in understanding. "Do you have your wand? We need to get out of here sooner rather than later, I think."

Rather than say anything, Quirrell jerked his head toward the middle of the room, and Harry moved himself just enough to spot a tall, ornate mirror standing there. At the mirror's feet lay two wands and his shield bracelet. That was not a promising sign.

Something else it was not, however, was an insurmountable obstacle. Maneuvering his hands as best he could, he flexed his fingers until he caught a rope in both. He muttered "_Krtsel"_, and the cords all around him began to dissolve and loosen. From the things he had read and what Professor Flitwick had said, he and Lash had begun to suspect that his magic-corroding spell was a variant on the standard and commonplace _Finite Incantatem_ other wizards used, but whatever it was, it did its job perfectly well. Only a couple of moments passed before the ropes were gone, and he ran over to where their tools lay. Slipping the small torc around his wrist where it belonged, he waved his wand over the trapped wizard and handed the other man's focus to him once he was free. "Let's get out of here."

"R-Right."

Looking around, Harry grimaced. The room was a circle with only one exit, and unfortunately, that was currently filled with pitch-black flames. "Do you know what spell that is?" he asked, motioning to the doorway.

Quirrell shook his head fearfully. "N-No. Before th-th-this year, I t-t-t-taught Muggle St-t-tudies," he explained. "I th-th-thought D-Defense would be a n-n-nice change, but I d-don't really know m-much ab-b-bout it."

"Considering his classes this past year, that answers a number of questions I had," muttered Lash unhappily.

"Well, nothing for it, then. _Krtsel_." A bolt of dim white light smacked into the base of the flames, but his spell did nothing. The flames continued to burn undaunted.

"Dissolving it won't work," he heard Quirrell say from behind him.

He rolled his eyes. "Do you have a better idea about how to deal with this spell, then?"

"That black fire is _Ignis Proditoris_. Traitor's Fire. It's not a spell, but the result of a potion being applied to the ground."

Harry stopped and slowly turned around to face Quirrell. Where had the man's stutter gone?

Quirrell watched him with cold eyes and gave him an even colder smile. "It's a fascinating bit of magic, really. Fascinating, but not a little Dark. I'm surprised Dumbledore let Severus use it at all."

He started stepping to the side, getting the fire out from behind him but never taking his eyes off Quirrell. What was going on? Did Quirrell have multiple personalities or something, or was it all an act, or what? "Who are you?" he demanded.

"I, boy?" The man smiled. "I am Lord Voldemort."

"Who?"

The smile vanished as quickly as it had come, and the wizard eyed him for a long moment. "You truly do not know who I am," he muttered softly. "How strange. But I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Even now, ten years after my supposed defeat, they refuse to speak my name. Perhaps you will recognize one of the monikers they gave me, instead. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. You-Know-Who. The Dark Lord."

Oh. Harry swallowed nervously. This was the wizard who had murdered his parents, and now he was trapped in a room with the man. "I guess that makes sense. No one would ever think that the same person who taught Muggle Studies by day would be calling for normal people and Muggleborns to be exterminated by night."

"Taught…?" Quirrell or Voldemort or whoever he was burst into raucous laughter. "Silly boy. No. This is young Quirinus's body. I am merely… borrowing it for the moment."

Lash stepped forward and placed herself between Harry and Voldemort, standing just enough to the side that he could see through her. "Possession. It is an uncommon ability even in my world, enough that I never expected you would encounter someone capable of it. My only question is why did he let Quirrell have so much control if he can possess people."

Voldemort could not hear Lash's words, but he could see Harry's widening eyes. "I see you begin to understand. Quirinus doesn't even know I am here. He thinks he has come down with a bad case of sleepwalking and periodic blackouts."

"You're the one who let the troll in on Halloween," Harry guessed. "Why?"

"A distraction. I planned to lead the troll near the Great Hall and take advantage of the chaos to search this place, but"—Voldemort scowled—"Quirinus chose that moment to wake up. Then he had to get himself injured trying to stop the troll, which kept me from using his body until he was healed. It was a frustrating situation all around.

"But the past is in the past. I am here now. Do you know why, little Harry?"

However bad Harry felt this situation was, it had just worsened as he heard this vile man purr his name. This could only be a bad sign. "To kill me."

"To kill you? No. Well," Voldemort corrected himself, "not as my primary goal, anyway. When I saw you on my way here, I couldn't help but snatch you up. What I am interested in tonight is the Philosopher's Stone. What that is is of no importance at the moment," he continued when he saw the confusion on Harry's face, "but suffice it to say that there are a number of uses I can find for it. However, I do have a small problem."

The evil wizard snapped his fingers, and Harry's arms and legs slammed together just as if they had been tied together with ropes again. Before he could do anything, he was lifted into the air and floated over to the killer. "I know that the Stone is inside this mirror. What I don't know is how to get it out. I have done what I can, but it will not come out for me. It might, however, come out for you." Voldemort smiled wickedly. "Slytherin or not, you are still Dumbledore's precious little savior. If he keyed it to anyone besides himself, it would be you." With a small shrug, he added, "And if not, there are all sorts of things that can be revealed with a virgin's blood. Traditionally that is a female virgin, but there is no reason a boy cannot be used instead. I recommend you don't force me down that road; the future will be far less painful if you cooperate."

A few plans had come to Harry's mind while Voldemort was talking, but they all disappeared as soon as he was turned to stare into the mirror's surface. He expected to see himself and the black flames behind him. That was not what he found.

There he stood, a little older, a little bigger. Next to him was Lash, dressed in casual clothes and with her arm around his shoulders. The incredible thing was that there were other people there as well who were waving to mirror-him and Lash, and they responded with nods and smiles when Lash returned the gesture even if he didn't! A few even came up to talk to her and shake her hand while kids Harry recognized as fellow Hogwarts students came up to him and did the same.

This mirror was amazing. Was this the future he was watching?

The vision was broken when Voldemort spun him around and pulled him closer until their faces were just a few inches apart. "Well?" the murderer demanded. "Where is the Stone?"

The Stone? He didn't know where this stone was, but he couldn't say that, not if he wanted to get out of here. If he led Voldemort on a merry chase, however, he would have the chance to escape. A swallow, and Harry said the first lie that came to mind. "I saw the library. There's a trick bookcase, and I think I saw—"

He did not see the fist that slammed into the side of his head and sent him tumbling to the ground. "Oh, dear," Voldemort said in a voice full of false sympathy. "Little Harry, that was a mistake. Didn't your parents ever teach you not to tell lies?" A foot dug into his ribs and flipped him over. "I told you it would be better to cooperate. Clearly I need to show you why. But first, _Legilimens_."

The world flipped and flopped and spun. Harry fell to one knee, but rather than marvel at the fact he was now free, he stood and took note of his surroundings. Around him were… more hims. The other Harrys were dressed just the same as him, their faces and robes just as bloodied as his, but the key difference was that they all wore their shield bracelets on their right wrists.

A loud shout came from somewhere else in the distance, and Harry did not fight the smile that came to his face. Battles of psychomancy were waged in the defender's mindscape, and his was an irritating place to host a fight. Lash had originally been doubtful about the usefulness of turning his mind into a hall of mirrors, but even she had been won over in the end when she tried to move through it under the same limitations a human mind would have, and now his idea was showing its merits against a real enemy.

How was Voldemort supposed to get to him to steal his memories if he couldn't find him?

Holding his hands out in front of him, Harry slowly felt his way through the disorienting maze until he spotted a mirror pane that had its corners marked with little flecks of gold. There was a second layer to his mind besides the obvious: a complicated system of tunnels running through the space behind the mirrors that could only be accessed through the doorways he had hidden behind marked mirrors like this one. He reached into the edge of the reflection – through the glass, which was only possible with these particular mirrors – and felt for the handle he knew was there. A pull, and the mirror swung open like a door to reveal the steel tunnel and its fluorescent overhead lights.

Harry ran down the pathway toward the sound of shouting and cursing, and once he judged he was near, he slid open the little metal slot he had installed behind each normal mirror that would allow him to see out.

He then jumped away when an abomination of a man slammed his face into the mirror.

If he needed any proof that Voldemort was not Quirrell, he now had it. The man standing in his mindscape was paper-white, his eyes red like blood, and to make things even stranger, he had long diagonal slits where his nose should be. The wizard staggered backward and rubbed his face before sweeping his hand over his bald head, and then he leveled his wand at the mirror.

Harry slammed the slot shut and moved over to the one behind it, looking out this mirror instead. What he saw was about what he expected: Voldemort was shattering the mirrors in a frustrated attempt to figure out where he was going, a good strategy except for the part where the mirrors all repaired themselves immediately after they were broken, a benefit of keeping his mindscape so simple. Voldemort let out a loud scream of frustration. "Potter! Get out here so I can kill you!"

"Yeah, because that's going to make me come out," he muttered too quietly to be heard through the metal and glass. Shaking his head, he closed the slot and reached out to press a button mounted in the wall.

While the mirrors made an excellent diversion and stalling tactic, they would not win a fight for him. He had thought to hide pits and spike traps in the floor, but Lash had suggested something else once she knew the mirrors would recover so quickly. After reading through a book on recent military history – recent in this case being within the last century or so – she had suggested attaching behind each mirror, set flush into the metal walls, a stack of several weapons called Claymore mines.

A loud boom sounded while Harry moved a couple of mirrors down to peer out at the blast zone. The mirror he had just been looking through, its partner on the opposite side, and the mirrors to either side of those two were gone, the glass shattered and turned into deadly shrapnel by the explosions and thousands of ball bearings that had blasted out from behind the two mirrors. Since the mines had been placed in a column starting at what would be about knee-high on an adult and going up to about head height, he was not terribly surprised to see that Voldemort's mental avatar had been absolutely shredded. He still had to swallow the gorge that threatened to come out at the sight of all the blood and flesh sprayed about. Lash had prepared him for the sight by providing a number of illusions that showed the inevitable outcome if he activated those weapons, but seeing what he knew was an illusion and seeing it in real life were two totally different things.

Still, he had done enough damage that he could take the fight out of his mind. A mental push made Voldemort's avatar vanish, the wizard in too much pain to keep the spell going, and then he jumped through the ceiling back into his own body. Another incantation of his corrosion spell made the invisible bonds holding him tight vanish, and he quickly climbed to his feet.

He wasn't fast enough to counterattack before Voldemort had staggered upright. "That wasn't very nice," Quirrell's body panted. "Someone needs to teach—" He shook for a second and blinked in confusion. "M-Mister P-Potter? What's—"

"No time to explain, Professor," answered Harry, speaking so quickly he doubted his words were comprehensible. "_Nirh_!"

The jet of lavender light from his sleeping spell shot through Quirrell, but the unfortunate man did not collapse to the ground like Harry hoped he would. He just swayed on his feet for a second before standing straight and flashing the boy a cruel smile. "Thank you for that, little Harry. We still have to finish our conversation. _Crucio_!"

White-hot knives stabbed through every inch of him, and he fell to the ground screaming. His entire world was pain.

As abruptly as it had started, the dark red light vanished, and with it the worst of the pain. Not all of it, though. "See?" asked Voldemort, voice back under control and once again talking to him as though he was a small child. "It isn't nice to hurt people. That wasn't pleasant, is it?"

Harry just glared at him.

"Now, I will give you one chance to undo the mistakes you've made tonight." Walking closer, he leaned over to grab Harry's chin. "Tell me where the— AAAARGH!"

Once again there was screaming, but this time it wasn't Harry. Voldemort jumped back and cradled his hands. The fingers were shiny and red, and white blisters had formed and popped to cover the skin with water and blood. His hands had been _burned_.

All from touching Harry's bare skin?

"Harry!"

The cool sensation and sudden lack of pain from whatever curse Voldemort had used were as much the signal as Lash's shout. He shoved himself to his feet and tackled Voldemort to the ground, and then his fists were lashing out wildly until they hit skin and the evil wizard yelled again. Creeping forward on his knees, Harry kept hitting, this time focusing all his punches on Voldemort's face and ignoring the blows battering his ribs in retaliation.

After one hit, the skin was red and raw. After a second in the same spot, it was charred black and flaking off. After the third, Harry could see bloodied muscle. And after the fourth and fifth and sixth, there was just bone.

A very short time passed before Voldemort spasmed under him, but Harry barely noticed. Tears and snot streamed down his face as he kept hitting and hitting and hitting. Hands seized his shoulders and pulled him back, and looked up with bloodshot eyes to find his angel gazing down on him with sorrow. "It is over, Harry. He is finished. It is over."

"But… But I…"

"Hush. Hush, my brave, clever little boy. There will be a time to rage and yell and mourn. You have done enough. Sleep. Sleep and have no dreams."

Against his will, Harry's eyes closed, and he fell backward into the darkness once more.

* * *

**I never know whether it's a good thing or a bad thing when my characters start surprising me. The whole "attune the wand via attuning the battery" thing popped into my head fully formed, so I really can't say if it was my idea or Lash's.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	21. Nicolas Flamel

**13 chapters to cover all of Harry's first year. That's not terrible, but it's a lot slower than I was hoping to go. Sorry for the wait, especially since very little actually happened!**

**Special thanks to TheSinful for this chapter's disclaimer. For everyone else, I'm serious about this: if you have an idea for one, shout it out. After 184 of them over the last three and a half years, my stockpile is running low.**

**Disclaimer:** Did Neville's family intentionally put his life in danger during their attempts to force him to prove he was a wizard? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 21  
****Nicolas Flamel**

His elbows braced on his desk and his fingertips kneading his temples, Albus flicked his eyes at the blood-red gemstone shining innocently on his desk and let out a huff of self-deprecating amusement. In much the same way as his previous plans had done on the night of the Sorting, his ideas for what to do about the thief searching for the Philosopher's Stone had decided the night before was the perfect time to fall apart completely on him. A professor, one who had been proven not to be the culprit, lying dead on the ground; the Stone itself still safe inside the Mirror of Erised; and Harry Potter unconscious and showing signs of being tortured with an Unforgivable. He had no idea what had happened down in the secret corridor between the second and third floors, and until he did, he had no clue what he should do to keep the Stone safe or punish the perpetrator of all this or protect the students.

He was thoroughly at a loss.

A gout of fire burst into life in the air before him, and he allowed himself a smile when the flames resolved into the form of his phoenix familiar. One of his problems could now be solved: what he was to do with the Philosopher's Stone. He assumed Nicolas and Perenelle would want it back, but where exactly they wanted it hidden was the mystery. He would have sent it back to them with Fawkes the night before when he sent them the letter asking about their wishes except for the simple fact that they had previously kept it in England while they stayed in France. With that in mind, it was a possibility they would want him to find a secret place for it and to send them the location where they could retrieve it later at their convenience. The Flamels could be strange like that when it suited them.

Taking the roll of parchment from Fawkes's talons, he smiled at the bird. "Good flight?" To his surprise, the phoenix lowered its head and chirped mournfully. Albus looked at the letter in his hands with newfound trepidation and slowly unrolled it.

_My dearest student,_

_This is the hardest letter I have ever had cause write, and I hope when it is finished that you can find it in your heart to forgive me for causing you the pain I must. To answer the question you asked, I do not wish for you to hide the Stone, nor to return it to us. I do not wish for you to spend any more time or resources protecting it._

_I want you to destroy it, completely and utterly._

_I can already see your face of confusion, young Albus. Why would I tell you to destroy my greatest achievement, the pinnacle of my life's work in alchemy? What you do not understand – what no one but Perenelle understands – is that the Philosopher's Stone is not my great success. No, in truth it is my greatest failure and my greatest sin. Eternal life was never my goal, nor does the glint of gold hold any allure for me. My aim was only ever to find a way for my knowledge to help all people, a way to cure and heal the sick and broken that did not come with the price that creating and maintaining the Stone imposed._

_When I first created it, I vowed that I would only drink the Elixir until I could create a better, less tainted Stone. I do not know when extending my own life became an end in itself, but I admit now that at some point it did. I continued research I already knew was fruitless, retrod paths walked before that went nowhere. Anything to delay the inevitable, the realization that no matter how much I studied, there is always a price for power._

_We have talked before about destroying the Stone, Perenelle and I, but never could we gather the resolve necessary to do so. At some time in the near seven centuries of walking this earth, we began to fear death and what lay after it, and we convinced ourselves that we were not spitting in the face of our earlier promises. There was always some discovery that lay just beyond our reach, an epiphany waiting in the wings. With the Stone out of our possession for the last few months, we have discussed this decision on numerous occasions, and we know this is the right thing to do. We have lived longer than we had any right or need, and it is time now for us to let go of our fear and face what comes after this life._

_Before that hour comes upon me, there are some pieces of wisdom I have garnered over my long, long life that I now bequeath to you. Consider them your final lesson, student, and listen well._

_The choice between selfishness and generosity is a hard one, and too often it is easy to slip down the road that rewards only the self. Seek not the easy path, but the one that promises untold troubles. It is in giving of yourself for others that you will discover your true worth and true happiness._

_Never assume that you are correct in all things. The curse of humanity is to fail and fall, pick yourself up, and fall again. Find counselors you trust implicitly and task them to search for the flaws in your ideas. Listen to those who claim you are wrong. And most of all, when you know your thoughts are correct without a single doubt, look them over once again, for that is when you will make the worst of mistakes. When you were a young man, you had a need to prove yourself wiser and better read than all those around you; if you have yet to master that flaw, set yourself diligently to do so._

_Do not treat death as an enemy the way we did for so long. Look at it instead as a grand journey, an adventure that comes as the reward of a life well-lived. Rather than worry about what is to happen tomorrow, focus on today; tomorrow will come in its own time._

_Break not your promises, whether to yourself or to others. A man is only as whole and good as his honor, and an honorable man does not give his word lightly or with the intent to deceive._

_I will not forbid you mourn us; to do so would be cruel in the worst way possible. All I will ask is that when you mourn, do so with the understanding that all things, even sorrow, eventually fade away. If it brings you any comfort, know that once you, too, pass from this life and set your foot on the world they lies beyond this one, Perenelle and I will be there waiting to greet you with open arms and joyous smiles, no matter how many years we hope it will be until that happy reunion._

_Take care of yourself once we are gone, Albus. We love you like the son we could never have, and you have made us proud beyond all measure._

_With all my regrets and love,  
__Nicolas_

Slowly, ever so slowly, Albus rolled the parchment up again and set it to the side. Taking a deep breath, then another, he forced away his immediate urge to have Fawkes take him to Nicolas's house and argue with his old master. _'How could he do this?'_, one part of him demanded. _'He still has so much good he can do in the world. How could he ask this of me?!'_

There was another part of him, though, that wept but did not fault Nicolas and Perenelle for their decision. They had seen so much in their lives; not just success and joy, but war and death and grief. Given enough time, wind would wear down the highest mountain and waves drown the greenest shore; what could almost seven hundred years of sorrow do to the human spirit? And, too, if they felt the time had come for them to leave this world and rejoin their friends and family, what right did he have to hold them back? If it were him who had grown tired and wished only to fade away in peace, would he thank one of his own friends for guilting him into staying?

No, he would not. He would want his decision to be respected, his right to choose his own destiny to remain unviolated.

Brushing the dampness from his cheeks, he conjured a small stand and placed the Philosopher's Stone upon it. He raised his wand, incantation on his lips, but then he stopped. His eyes fell on the clusters of berries carved onto the dark shaft, and after a moment's hesitation, he placed it on his desk. This was not a task for the Elder Wand.

He walked through the door that led into his quarters and went to the armoire that stood as a silent sentinel in the back of the room. The various boxes in this cabinet were old and dusty, the kinds of items that Albus had found little use for over the years, and it was from the top shelf that he pulled a slim, rectangular box. Opening it, he reached in and pulled out a thin wand.

"And hello again to you, old friend," he whispered when the wand greeted him with a burst of sunny sparks. Apple and dragon heartstring, just a hair over nine inches; the wand he had carried throughout his education at Hogwarts and his life beyond until he had fought and defeated Gellert for mastery of the Deathstick. The only wand Nicolas had ever seen him wield.

The Stone winked at him when he returned, and he blinked away the tears that swelled up to distract him from his purpose. He raised his wand and said mournfully, "_Reducto_."

A flash of light, and the Philosopher's Stone, the greatest triumph of alchemy in all of recorded history, vanished to be replaced by nothing more than a few embers that burned bright and burned out before they could land on the floor.

There. It was done. The only thing that could keep Nicolas and Perenelle alive was gone.

Albus squeezed his eyes shut and fell back into his chair, his emotions overwhelming him. He would talk with his friends again soon; not today, not tomorrow, not when their passions were all raised. A few days for him to calm himself, and then he would talk to them about this. If they changed their mind in that time, he would help them as best he could to create a new Stone.

And if they remained firm in their decision, he would have a chance to give them a proper goodbye.

* * *

The light streaming onto his face made him blink once, twice, and finally Harry opened his eyes. 'White' was his first impression: white ceiling, white-painted stones making up the walls, and once he put his glasses back on, white linens on the bed. A glance around showed his bed to be one of many, albeit the only one occupied, and next to each bed was a small table ready for use; his own table had held only his glasses and a small bottle filled with some unknown potion.

He recognized this place. He was in the hospital wing.

"I wondered when you would wake." He turned to stare questioningly at Lash. The angel sat on the edge of his bed and reached out to cover one of his hands with her own. "You have been asleep for two days now. The nurse has been growing worried about you, and frankly, so have I."

"Two days?" he repeated in surprise, to which she just nodded. "How? Why?"

"Some of it is the curse Quirrell – or Voldemort, rather – used on you, I think, but some of it? Backlash from whatever magic it was that hurt him so greatly."

He frowned. "What was that, anyway? No one has ever been hurt from just touching me. I didn't do anything, and it can't be something that goes after anyone who wants to hurt me, or it would have happened to Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia and Dudley."

"I have only a few theories, each more outlandish than the next." At his curious expression, she sighed. "This is getting a little beyond my realm of knowledge, but if we were in my old reality, the most likely explanation would be that you are being protected by a Death Curse."

"A… Death Curse? That doesn't sound like something I want _protecting_ me," he said.

She shrugged. "It is not as terrible a thing as it first sounds. The wizards and witches with whom I am familiar could, in their last moments, put all their will and emotion into a powerful curse. Generally it was directed at their killer, but I know of a few individuals who voluntarily used up all their energies to lay a more powerful curse onto another than they could otherwise."

"And you think I've been cursed like that?" Harry asked with a shiver. Who could have put a curse on him? The slavers? The vampire? But if that were the case, why had it protected him? None of this made any sense!

"No, I do not believe it is you who has been cursed," was Lash's vaguely ominous reply. "I think – and this is only an assumption – if the magic of this reality allows for Death Curses, it was Voldemort who suffers under this curse, and most likely, it was cast by one of your parents." He stared at her, which prompted her to elaborate. "According to what McGonagall told us, there was some unusual magic that was performed when Voldemort tried to kill you as a child. This was after both your parents had been murdered, and they knew his intentions. If their last thoughts were about protecting you from him…" She raised her hands helplessly. "It is possible one or both of them could have laid a Death Curse upon him to keep him from harming you, and this was how it manifested. These kinds of curses can remain for generations, tied to the bloodline to keep the magic alive. As long as you live, you should be able to enjoy that protection."

Okay, that sounded a little better. "And there's no way for someone to avoid or undo a Death Curse?"

"There are ways, just none of them are very pleasant or easy. Killing the descendants of the one to create it will undo it, obviously, and depending on the exact phrasing of the curse, it is possible for another person to cast a Death Curse that opposes the original and negate it that way. Red Court vampires could do some unusual things with blood that would essentially adopt a cursed individual into the lineage of the one who cursed him and allow him to evade the worst effects, but thankfully, you do not have the Red Court in this reality. Like I said," she repeated, "it is possible for Voldemort to undo this curse, if indeed it is a Death Curse that protected you, but beyond killing you outright, I find it unlikely—"

The door at the front of the room swung open to reveal the long, white beard and pale blue eyes of the headmaster, and Lash cut herself off. "Good afternoon, Harry," greeted Dumbledore, his eyes starting to twinkle faintly behind his half-moon glasses. "You had us all quite worried."

'_Us all'_? Harry smiled mockingly to himself. Who else was worried about him, and could he meet these people?

"That said, no one is entirely sure just what happened between you and Professor Quirrell and your mystery assailant. Whatever information you can provide would be very helpful."

Under Lash's watchful eye, he recounted the entire encounter from when Voldemort walked up to him in the hallway to the point he passed out, though he skipped over their journey into his mindscape. That was a trick he wanted to keep in reserve, and off all his skills, it was the one that would suffer most should anyone know about the details of his defenses before attacking him. When he was finished, Dumbledore leaned back in the chair he had conjured shortly into the recounting and and ran his hand over his beard. "Most extraordinary. I should not need to tell you this, but you are quite fortunate to be alive after that. Many wizards with more knowledge and experience than you have faced him only to be cut down. That you survived is remarkable."

Was that disbelief Harry heard in the older man's voice, or was it just something he expected to hear after the year he had had here? "It helped that he was more interested in this stone or whatever than he was in killing me. I was a secondary consideration until he thought I was keeping it away from him. For some reason," he added while recalling the odd statement Voldemort had made, "he thought you would set it up where I could get the stone out of the mirror."

"Voldemort has always been unable to ascribe wisdom to other people. There was a way to remove the Stone from its hiding place, true, but I would not have made the security so lax that just anyone could pull it out. He never had any chance of stealing it."

Lash pursed his lips at that, but she just shook her head when he glanced in her direction. He supposed she would tell him when she was ready.

"So what are you going to do with it now?" he asked.

With a faint, dismissive smile, Dumbledore reached over and patted his hand. "Nothing you need to trouble yourself over. It has been taken care of." And that, clearly, was all the information Harry was going to get about that.

Changing the subject, he raised the question that had been eating away at him since early on in his retelling. "Sir, about Quirrell. When I hurt Voldemort, I also hurt him. Is he…?"

Dumbledore turned his eyes away, which was all the answer Harry needed. The elderly wizard answered unnecessarily, "I'm afraid he had already passed away from his injuries when we found you. Being possessed by so long, even if Voldemort could only be active for short periods of time if he wanted to keep his presence hidden, took a toll on his mind, body, and magic, and even without the damage you dealt him when you were defending yourself, Voldemort's abrupt departure probably would have been too much for him to withstand. By the time you faced him, there was nothing that could have changed his fate."

That did little to comfort him. It would be one thing if Quirrell had a hand in the matter, if his possession was voluntary or even something he was aware of. It wasn't, though. The only blame Quirrell had in this whole situation was that he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time; he was as much a victim as Harry, perhaps even more so. And Harry had killed him.

"You said Voldemort was gone?" he asked, desperate to change the subject. "Not dead, but that he left Quirrell's… body?"

"Yes, Harry, I regret to say it, but that is the case. He is still out there somewhere, perhaps looking for another body to take as his own. Not being truly alive, he cannot be killed." Dumbledore gave him a weak smile. "Nevertheless, while you may only have delayed his return to power, it will merely take someone else who is prepared to fight what seems a losing battle next time. And if he is delayed again, and again, why, he may never return to power."

"I'd feel better about that if he hadn't come so close this time," Harry muttered. "And even then, if he goes about it like he did this time, he'll still leave a trail of bodies behind him. Innocent people who don't deserve what he does to them."

"Sadly, that is equally true."

They sat in silence for a moment before Dumbledore commented lightly, "I have to say, I am surprised that you are not more curious about just how it was that the touch of your skin burned Voldemort. I rather expected that to be one of your first questions."

An embarrassed blush lit Harry's cheeks. With Lash's explanation, he had not thought to investigate a puzzle he had already thought solved. She had, however, said she was not sure about whether or not she was right, and from the way Dumbledore had phrased his statement, it sounded like he knew a little more on the subject. "You know what that was?"

"Know? Not at all." Harry stared incredulously at his easy smile. "I have my suspicions and my guesses, and I have been told they are generally good ones, but that is all they are. If you are still interested in hearing them…"

After a moment's thought, Harry nodded. Why not?

"It is all to do with the circumstances of that Halloween night. Your mother died to save you. If there is one thing Voldemort cannot understand, it is love. He didn't realize that love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark. Not a scar, no visible sign, but to have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever. It is in your very skin. Voldemort, full of hatred, greed, and ambition, could not touch you for this reason. It would be agony to touch a person marked by something so good."

Dumbledore's expression had turned soft and gentle throughout that explanation, and that was the only reason Harry was able to hide his shock at hearing such utter a bizarre belief.

"That… could be possible, but it is extremely unlikely," Lash said dubiously. "Love is powerful, but it is at its core a force of creation and transformation, not protection. The only instance I can think of when it is said to protect anyone is that people who are in love cannot be fed upon or even touched by vampires of the White Court – coincidentally, the effects of that are rather similar to what Voldemort experienced – but that is specifically romantic love, and considering the manner in which the White Court can bypass that protection, it really is less true love and more flesh memory."

Harry just shrugged. Even if love was as powerful in this world as it was in Lash's old one, the idea that the love of his long-dead mother, someone he still knew practically nothing about and honestly had not spared much thought, somehow lingered in his skin like acid that would ward off a single, specific person was hard for him to swallow. If his mother had given him protection like that, wouldn't it make more sense for her spell to protect him from anyone who tried to kill him, from the slavers and the vampire? And as Dumbledore said, no one actually knew what happened. Between the two choices, right now Harry was still leaning toward Lash's Death Curse theory; it might not have the sheen of a fairy tale like Dumbledore's did, but he had learned over his admittedly short life that the most important things rarely did.

Unsure of how he was expected to respond to the old man's declaration, he instead changed the subject once again. "Headmaster, I don't know what the rules are about students coming back to Hogwarts over the summer, but—"

"That is not allowed, I'm sorry to say," Dumbledore answered, though Harry found himself doubting the sincerity of that statement. If the headmaster of the school did not like a particular policy, he of all people was the one with the authority to change it. "Besides, surely you would like to spend the time with your family after all the time you have spent here. Don't worry," he said with a playful wink, "I won't take offense."

The family Harry had been forced to use magic on to make them treat him like a person? No, not really. "But just to visit? There is still so much I don't know, and if I could check some books out from the library…"

…then Lash would have no cause to gripe over the summer when she was denied her reading materials.

"The answer is still no, Harry." A second door, this one smaller than the main one, opened up to reveal Madam Pomfrey standing there, and Dumbledore took one look at her before returning his gaze to Harry. "I fear I might have overstayed my welcome. If there is anything else you ever wish to discuss, you need but seek me out."

Now under the stern care of the nurse, Harry just spent a moment looking at the closed doors. He wasn't sure what kind of impression the headmaster had meant to make with his visit, but it was… Well, it was definitely an impression, at least.

* * *

"_'All students are reminded that it is against Hogwarts policy and Ministerial law for underage wizards and witches to use magic outside of school. Doing so will see the violator facing academic discipline, fines, or even expulsion.'_ They aren't mincing words, are they?" Harry asked in a surprised voice. He had forgotten about the letter they had all been given that morning until now, but with the Hogwarts Express pulling into the station, he figured now was a good time to read it.

"What I would like to know is what they actually intend with that rule," Lash replied. "I doubt it is just a sternly worded warning not to reveal the existence of magic to the normal humans, or there would be no reason to hand the letters out to everyone, just those of you who are returning to the wider world. Even then, how would they plan to enforce it?"

"I don't know. It isn't something new, I don't think," he said, "or the older years would have been surprised. They weren't, so this is common. But if they actually can watch for that, how in the world did they miss all the magic I did before coming to Hogwarts?"

A laugh bubbled up out of the angel, and he looked over to find out what she found so funny. She just shook her head and took a deep breath before she explained, "Before you started Hogwarts, you used foci you created on your own. You did not use one crafted by a third party and with spells on it that you did not understand. I do not think the school and the government monitor you. I think they monitor the _wand_. It is just that for the other students, their wands are the only means they have for casting spells. That was why they never noticed you when you were younger; they were unable to." A sharp smile danced across her face as she let her eyes drift in thought. "And, perhaps, that might be the reason wand motions were first stressed so heavily. If wizards were tied to their wands and could do little or no magic without one, it would be child's play to keep track of what everyone does."

He shrugged as the train finally pulled to a stop. Since he did not need his wand for every little thing, not using it over the summer was no great imposition, but he might start off a little slower than normal to make sure Lash's suspicions were on the spot. He waited a few minutes for the crowds to clear out a little, and then he slipped out the archway labeled as the exit to King's Cross.

Harry had thought long and hard about what to do in terms of getting back to Privet Drive, particularly with the evidence that the Dursleys had forgotten him on Christmas, and as a result he had decided not to bother relying on them to pick him up. Instead, he made his way to the nearest men's restroom and waited for the businessman already inside to leave. The potential witness gone, he rubbed the wooden ring he had slipped over his left thumb and thought of the yard behind Number 4. "_Darbas_."

The world collapsed for a few seconds, and then he was at the back door of the Dursleys' home. Now it was all a matter of waiting to see if any warnings came for him. "I'm back!" he called out once he slipped inside. His eyes fell on the only member of the family in sight, and his greeting died in his throat.

Something was dreadfully wrong.

Dudley had never been the brightest person in the world, but the last time Harry saw him, he had been fairly normal otherwise. Now, though? Dudley sat in a chair at the kitchen table with an empty gaze aimed on the opposite wall, and he had not reacted at all despite Harry's yell coming from directly behind him. He also had lost what looked to be five stone or so, his clothes hanging off of him, which would have been fantastic news had it not made his new immobility all the more ominous.

He was distracted from his staring when the front door swung open to allow Uncle Vernon through. "Ah, Harry," the obese man said when his eyes fell on the young wizard. "I didn't realize you were home already."

"I got back a few minutes ago," was Harry's wary reply. He had expected to have to field at least a few questions about how he had managed to travel from London to Little Whinging on his own and without any money, but apparently Uncle Vernon did not care— No, he didn't. The obese man was walking into the kitchen for a snack, the front door left open and the car still running. "Are… Are you going to turn the car off?"

"Oh, right," Uncle Vernon said after a glance at the door. "Forgot to do that."

A minute later, Harry stared at the door that was still hanging open despite his uncle walking back in the house. He walked over to shut it, and as a result he was able to peek in to his uncle and aunt's bedroom to see Aunt Petunia lying in bed. She was not asleep – her open eyes told him that much, as did the fact that she looked up at him when she noticed him watching – but instead was just lying there listlessly. It brought to mind the lethargy she had fallen into when she had been fighting the commands he had placed in her mind, but Lash had fixed that problem. Hadn't she?

Barely pausing to grab his trunk, he rushed upstairs and demanded, "Lash! What happened?!"

"You are talking about what happened with to the Dursleys while you were away, I presume?" she asked unnecessarily, her voice heavy with what sounded like fatigue. How an angel could be tired, he had no clue, but it was yet another issue that he did not need added onto his already-full plate.

"Of course I'm talking about them! Something happened with the psychomancy. It's the only explanation that makes sense." He shook his head and started pacing. "Do you think someone else did something to them? I don't know why anyone would target them, but maybe he tried to give them some commands and it interfered with the magic we did to them? Or could it be failing? You never said that this would—" His mouth continued to move, but he could not hear his own voice, and after a moment he looked over at the window where Lash was standing.

"No, I do not believe there has been any meddling with the spells," she explained slowly, even reluctantly. "Do you remember what I told you when I first introduced you to psychomancy? I said it was a delicate and dangerous art, one that could have unpredictable side effects if it went wrong."

"And… you think it went wrong somewhere?"

She opened her mouth, and then she shut it quickly. Another moment passed in silence. "Yes, I believe it did. It was your first attempt at mind magics, so mistakes were really only to be expected. Changing a human's personality is also fraught with difficulties, which only compounds the issue." Lash sighed. "Every alteration in a mortal's mind will induce some instability, and if the caster is unlucky, that instability can push the mind toward collapse quickly rather than slowly."

"So how do we fix…" He trailed off as he realized what she had said. "_'Quickly rather than slowly_'? You knew this was going to happen?"

"Not this specifically, and not this soon," she qualified, "but did I expect something to happen at some point in time? Yes. It is an inevitable consequence of this implementation of psychomancy."

"If you knew it was going to happen, why didn't you tell me?!" he demanded.

She raised one eyebrow. "If I had told you this was a consequence, would you have done it in the first place?"

"No!"

"And that is why I did not inform you." He stared at her in disbelief. "The Dursleys as they once were were abusers, their crimes wearing down your mind and self-worth. I could not allow that to happen. Unfortunately, our options were somewhat limited at the time, if you care to recall; I cannot interact with anyone except you, and simply leaving this place would have imposed its own myriad difficulties." Crossing her arms and looking down at him, she concluded, "Teaching you how to alter their minds was the most feasible method of protecting you from their abuses."

"The most feasible method," he repeated after a second's pause. He was trying to wrap his head around this, but that was proving more and more difficult to do so as she kept talking. How did this, any of it, sound like a good choice? "Mental collapse. What do you mean by that?"

"The eventual disconnect of the psyche from the world around it to some unpredictable degree. Paranoia, intractable depression, insanity in the most extreme cases." Her voice was calm, clinical, as if she was discussing the weather rather than the fact that he had just consigned the Dursleys to madness.

"How long does that take?"

"It depends. With the way Petunia has begun behaving again, two years, maybe three. Assuming Dudley's absence seizures were really the first signs of instability, perhaps a year after that before he becomes totally catatonic." Lash shrugged. "Unless we see something beyond his newfound absentmindedness, I would assume Vernon to be the most stable. There is no reason his own problems should progress much further than they already have provided no one else meddles with his mind."

Harry's breath caught in his throat, and he wrapped his arms around himself as his entire world threatened to collapse on top of him. Him a _killer_, his relatives going _mad_, his guardian angel _manipulating_ him. What was going to hammer down next?! His reply was barely a whisper. "You were never going to tell me any of this, were you? You were just going to let me go on with my life without any clue of what you made me do."

"It was a choice that had to be made."

"It was the wrong choice!" he yelled. Hot anger flooded his veins, and he glared at her. "I don't understand how an angel could be this… this…"

Her pursed lips all but dared him to say it. "This what?"

"This evil!"

"Or perhaps my actions were simply a necessity you refuse to understand," she said in a cold voice.

"I don't want to understand!" he shouted back. "I don't want anything to do with it. And if you don't care about it," he added with a crushed scowl, "I don't want anything to do with _you_, either."

Lash narrowed her eyes at him, and when she finally spoke, her words were hard and clipped. "If that is your desire, my host, so be it."

And then she vanished.

* * *

**Damn it, Lash!**

**I was never happy with Dumbledore's too-brief explanation for why the Flamels, after centuries of life, would choose **_**then**_** to let go of their ties to eternal life. It seemed too convenient, even with the understanding that Dumbledore was relaying only the bare bones of the situation. I could have gone with the idea I've seen before that Dumbledore destroyed the Stone without consulting them for whatever reason – which is a possibility, admittedly, considering we know only what Dumbledore told Harry in book 1 and the proof in canon that he's a shameless liar – but that wouldn't go along with my decision for this story to make Dumbledore's actions, if not necessarily **_**good**_**, at least somewhat justifiable. Besides, this is more interesting.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	22. Hard Truths

**I went back and modified the true love vs. Death Curse discussion in last chapter; Eberhardt reminded me of a few aspects of DF canon I had totally forgotten about that invalidated much of Lash's commentary on that score. Check it out if you want, but it probably won't change much about the story as a whole.**

**Disclaimer:** Did any of the authority figures in Harry's life ever give him much reason to trust them? If not, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 22  
****Hard Truths**

Bored.

That was the best word Harry could find to describe how he felt after a week back at Privet Drive. True to her word, Lash had not returned even once since he ordered her away, but her absence had only highlighted just how alone he was. Even if he wanted to spend time with the Dursleys, he couldn't. Dudley only acted when prompted, though at least on those occasions some of the boy he used to be was visible through his puppet-like demeanor; Aunt Petunia spent half her time either in bed or puttering about on some task before leaving it half-done; and Uncle Vernon was at work for most of the day. He had never made friends with any of the rest of the kids in the neighborhood, either, first because the Dursleys maligned him to the rest of the adults and then because he was too busy with Lash. Nor could he exchange letters or visit with his friends from Hogwarts because he did not have any.

Looking at his social circle from a distance, it was a nasty shock to realize just how small it really was. In the Muggle world, nobody; among the wizards, a grand total of three, Sally-Anne a closer acquaintance than Hannah or Susan but still just an acquaintance. His relationship with the dwarves was pure business. The only people he was close to were the Veela, Aimée and her family chief amongst them.

For the last two years and change, the one individual whom he considered the most important in his life had been Lash, and no one else even came close to filling that hole now that she was gone.

With a sigh, he shoved those melancholy thoughts away. Yes, he missed Lash. That did not mean he wanted to see her, though. He was still furious with the angel for tricking him into mucking about with the Dursleys' heads when she knew what would happen to them. He was also very intentionally not thinking about how an angel could do something that evil and what that could mean for his understanding of the morality of driving people insane. To keep his mind off that and other, related topics, he had instead made sure to keep busy. All his summer homework was finished and proofread, his school books had been reread, he had traveled to Diagon Alley for new books, and his runes for his proper flying broomstick had been tweaked and revised and practiced to the point that he was more than ready to make it for real.

He was still bored.

Harry forcefully tugged his mind off that train of thought and focused on the calculations in front of him. After the way Voldemort's spell had gone through his shield with barely a shift from its original course, he knew he needed to redesign his shield bracelet with an additional metal to protect him from purely magical effects as well as physical objects. That meant rewriting the runes to take the new metal into account, not to mention picking the metal in question. He expected brass would be the best material for it, but the calculations he had just worked out were giving an equivocal result, and he had never been able to make much sense out of them without Lash's… help…

"I'm not doing this," he told himself, forcibly redirecting his mind to any other subject. There had to be some way to keep his mind off her, to block out the pain of the hole where his most precious person had been.

He needed to get out of the house; that was the obvious solution. Get out of the house and go somewhere where he could focus on something other than Lash. The fingers of his left hand curled up to brush against the wooden ring sitting around his thumb, and he knew where to go. He had not visited Aimée since the previous summer, and now was as good a time as any. A spoken word caused the world to spin and swirl around him, and then he was surrounded by the white stone of the Toulon Veelas' courtyard.

The air in his lungs left him in a rush, and he had to sit down on the nearby bench as tears threatened to come to his eyes. It was so stupid, but now he could not help but remember how Lash had always made some joke about the Veelas' love of white and their similarity to the White Court of her old world whenever he came here. Was there nowhere he could go that would not call up memories of the things she had said? It wasn't like she was dead – she was an immortal angel, for goodness' sakes! – but then why did it feel like she had?

Deep breaths, in and out. In and out. In and…

Harry's eyes popped open, his ears ringing from the sound of powerful magic sitting so close to him. His gaze was dragged almost against his will to a large tree, black berries glistening in large clusters. An… elm? He shook his head, trying to remember the lessons Lash had given him about different types of trees. Elderberry, that was it. How had he not noticed a tree this powerful the last several times he was here?!

"Harry?" He looked over his shoulder to find a woman with platinum-blonde hair and silver eyes walking toward him, and her expression morphed from one of confusion to undiluted delight. "You should have said you were coming! It has been so long since you last visited. Aimée was sure that you had forgotten all about her."

He smiled at the Veela. Of all the mortal adults he had ever met, Lisette was by far his favorite. He did not know if that was because she was the mother of his best friend or if it was because she had always treated him with the kind of directness he would have expected were he several years older than he really was, but whatever the reason, he thoroughly enjoyed seeing her. "Sorry. I didn't know I was coming by until I did."

"Well, I'm sorry to tell you that Aimée's not here right now. She and the rest of the girls are off on their year-end shopping trip. In Bordeaux, not Orléans," she quickly added. "We haven't heard of any more thralls or vampires in Orléans since last time, but we felt it was better to change location anyway."

"It's fine. I can come back later." Changing the subject entirely, he pointed over his other shoulder at the elderberry tree. "New decorations?"

Her smile became even more amused. "Scholar, soldier, and gardener, too? If only you weren't a wizard. Yes, that tree came to us just a few months ago. The groundskeepers in Lyon felt it was time for a change, but rather than get rid of all the old plants, they just shipped them out to all the smaller settlements."

"Would anyone mind if I took a branch from it?" With a piece of a tree that powerful as the main shaft, his broomstick would almost certainly be a lot faster than the prototype he had finished over Christmas break.

"Harry," Lisette answered in a suddenly serious tone, "after what you did for us in Paris, you could ask for any number of things, and we would be more than happy to provide them. A branch from a tree is so insignificant that you don't even need to ask.

"Now, I have a question of my own. Why were you crying?"

"Crying? I wasn't—"

"Your eyes say otherwise."

He looked away for a moment. This was not something he even wanted to think about, let alone dwell on, but on the other hand, who else could he really talk to about it? Being older, Lisette was much more likely than Aimée to have good advice about what he should do about all this. "What… What do you do if someone you trust, someone important to you, tricks you into doing something… horrible?"

"Horrible?" she repeated softly. When he nodded, she asked, "How do you mean?"

"My relatives are going insane. A couple of years ago, my… my mentor taught me how to twist their personalities so they would be nicer to me, but she never told me that it was going to drive them actually crazy." His face scrunched up. "And do you know why she didn't tell me? It's because she knew if she did, I wouldn't go through with it. She actually said that to my face!"

He cut himself off when Lisette raised a hand. "I'm sorry, but I'm confused. You used magic to make your relatives '_nicer_'? You're a sweet boy, and I'm sure you wouldn't have agreed to doing that in the first place just because they didn't give you as many birthday presents as you wanted or something. How did they treat you before this?"

"Not well." That was an understatement if there ever was one. He knew how the Dursleys had treated him was wrong; he had known that even before Lash came into his life. After a moment, he admitted, "Really badly, actually. If anyone else who knew about it had cared, prison time badly. But that doesn't mean they deserve to have their minds destroyed!"

Lisette just hummed for a second, her eyes hard and narrowed as she stared over his head at nothing in particular. "So why did she make you do it instead of just doing it herself?"

"She can't. I mean, she knows how, obviously, but there are rules that keep her from doing much of anything by herself. Teaching me how to do it was probably pushing those limits as it was," he added thoughtfully. He had never really thought about it, but Lash really did not ask for permission to take control of his body very much despite her infrequent claims of boredom, and before this, he gladly would have let her do it more often than she did. Nor did she keep control very long. Was that because she felt it would not be right, or might it be because she literally couldn't do it as often or for as long as she might want?

"She couldn't do anything about it by herself, and instead she thought the best way of dealing with the situation was to have you rework your relatives' heads in her stead to make them not abuse you even though it would hurt them in the long run. Is that about right?" He nodded at her summary, and the Veela sighed. "I can kind of see where she's coming from, honestly."

"What?!"

"It sounds like she was looking out for you. If she is as limited as you say she is, there wouldn't be many options she could choose from to protect you."

"That doesn't change the fact that my relatives are going mad! What she did—" No, he knew that was not right. He was the one who did it. "It was wrong," he finished in a far weaker voice than he had started with.

"Looked at by itself, yes, it is," she agreed, her tone far too light for his sense of comfort. "But then again, how is it any different from breaking into some vampires' nest and killing one of them?"

Harry stared at her aghast. "That, that's completely different! I went there to rescue Aimée and Margaux. If the vampire hadn't attacked me, or if he hadn't taken them in the first place, I wouldn't have had to kill him!"

"And if your relatives hadn't abused you, she wouldn't have had to break them. It's the exact same thing. Not that that's a bad thing," she added, "nor does it say anything bad about you. You went into the Catacombs to save the girls, and while you were there, you did everything you had to do to keep yourself safe and bring them home. You will never hear me say that I do not appreciate what you did or that I'm not thankful for your bravery.

"Just like how you saved my little girl, when you were in danger, it sounds like your mentor did everything _she_ could possibly do to keep _you_ safe. If there is any difference in the consequences, it lies solely in the fact that here the cost for your safety is not the life of some unknown vampire. It is people whose names, whose lives and histories, you know. It becomes more personal now, but aside from that, it is the same in every other respect."

"Then why didn't she tell me?!" he demanded. The courtyard echoed with the silence that followed, and Lisette's expression was as serene as his own was astonished. Was that what he was really stuck on; not that she had made him irreparably injure his own relatives, but that she had kept it a secret from him for all this time? Shaking from the mix of anger and fear that churned in his gut, he fell heavily onto the bench from which he had leapt.

A cool hand move to rest on his shoulder, and he looked from it to the Veela who had laid it there. "I can't tell you why she didn't say anything about it without asking her myself, but I can tell you what I think the reason might have been. She was scared of your reaction, and if she didn't tell you, she could put it off for as long as possible. It was not the best option she had, but…" Lisette shrugged helplessly. "Fear of losing those close to us can make anyone make stupid mistakes."

He looked away. "So if someone does something bad – use magic to drive people insane, even kill another person – it's somehow okay if they had a good reason? That's not right. It's not fair."

"No, it's not fair, but unfortunately, that's just the way it is sometimes. The choices we have to make are rarely obvious as good or bad, and sometimes there is no right choice to be made in the first place." She squeezed his shoulder before pulling her hand away. "Welcome to the world of adult decisions, where we do the best we can at the time and live with the consequences afterwards."

"So what am I supposed to do?" he asked piteously. "I… I told her I didn't want to see her ever again."

"Look for her. Find her. Mend fences." Harry looked up at her in time to see her shrug once again. "The sheer strength of your feelings of betrayal is all I need to know that you care for her, and knowing you, I'm sure she feels the same way. Neither of you wants to be mad at the other. You two can resolve this and put it behind you, but you need to actually talk about it. This is serious, yes, but is it more important than the relationship you share?"

"No. No, it's not. I need to go." Lisette just smiled when he shot to his feet, and after giving her a quick smile in return, he threw himself back into the crushing void between here and there. He needed to go somewhere private where he could try to get Lash to talk to him.

He just hoped she listened.

* * *

_The cool sensation and sudden lack of pain from whatever curse Voldemort had used were as much the signal as Lash's shout. He shoved himself to his feet and tackled Voldemort to the ground, and then his fists were lashing out wildly until they hit skin and the evil wizard yelled again. Creeping forward on his knees, Harry kept hitting, this time focusing all his punches on Voldemort's face and ignoring the blows battering his ribs in retaliation._

_After one hit, the skin was red and raw. After a second in the same spot, it was charred black and flaking off. After the third, Harry could see bloodied muscle. And after the fourth and fifth and sixth, there was just bone…_

_"W-W-Why?!" the misshapen face beneath his hands screamed. Harry flinched away, and the half-crumbled skull slowly lifted itself from the stone floor. "I d-d-d-d-d-didn't do an-n-nything t-to you," demanded Quirrell. "W-Why did you k-k-k-kill me?!"_

_He shot to his feet and staggered away, which only let Quirrell stand and pursue him. "I… I didn't. It was Voldemort. He was the one who killed you! I was just trying to stay alive!"_

_"V-V-Voldemort wasn't th-the one who kept hitting m-me!" Faster than he could follow, Quirrell had closed the distance and wrapped his hands around Harry's throat. "You were! It's your fault! Murderer!"_

_The hands holding him squeezed._

_"Now it's your turn."_

Harry's eyes shot open, and his harsh breaths sounded loud in his ears as he panted in fright. A nightmare, his sleep-addled mind finally realized; it had just been a nightmare. And despite it being – he checked the clock next to his bed – just after two in the morning, there was no way he was going to be able to fall back asleep right now. Throwing the covers off him, he carefully made his way out the door and down the darkened stairwell. Into the dining room, past the figure sitting on the table, into the kitchen—

He stopped in his tracks, quest for a glass of water completely forgotten. Slowly turning around, he looked again. There _was_ someone sitting on the far side of the table, just staring through the window into the bright moonlight. Someone with blonde hair.

"I don't have you to thank for that nightmare, do I?"

"No," Lash replied sadly. "I have no reason to send you a nightmare. Even if I did, you should know by now that my ability to influence your mind is extraordinarily limited. Illusions work on your senses, but dreams? Those are entirely internal. They are far beyond my current talents."

That gave him a little relief. He did not want to consider that the angel had resorted to using bad dreams to lead her to him, especially since he had been trying to get her attention for the last week since his talk with Lisette only for her to ignore him, but it was an idea that had sprung to mind nonetheless. If she was willing to drive people mad in the process of protecting him, nightmares were a minor thing. After another moment, he walked over to her side of the table and hopped up to sit on it as well, his own eyes peering through the dining room window to find the large full moon hanging over the house.

More than a minute passed in silence.

"I'm sorry," he said, finally breaking the oppressive silence. Lash said nothing, and he slowly continued, each word picked with great care. "I'm not sorry for everything, though. I still think there were other choices you… we… could have made to get Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia to treat me better. But I shouldn't have called you evil like that, not without giving you a chance to explain why you did it the way you did. And I shouldn't have told you I wanted nothing to do with you," he finished weakly.

Lash sighed. "Do not apologize for sending me away, Harry. If there were only one thing you did correctly in our argument, it would be that. Some time to myself, to reflect on all I have done, was exactly what I needed. And I, too, am sorry. Not for teaching you psychomancy or using you to alter the Dursleys' minds; I maintain that it was the best option available to us at the time, and if I were forced into that situation again, I would make the same choice. But I should not have hidden the consequences from you the way I did, nor should I have reacted so harshly when you confronted me about it. I bungled that situation badly."

"We both did." He finally turned his head to look at her, though she kept staring straight ahead. "I don't suppose we can just go back to the way things were, can we?"

"No, we cannot. Nor should we. This was a painful lesson that we both needed to learn, and to go back in time would not help matters in any way."

Harry nodded and looked out the window again. Several seconds later, he finally asked, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"At the time, it was because if I explained the consequences, you would have refused to go through with it, and modifying their personalities was the fastest means to keep you safe from them. I told you that." He nodded. "Afterwards… Lisette had the right of it," she sighed. "I knew your reaction would not be a good one, and I wanted to delay dealing with it for as long as I possibly could, even though I knew the longer we did not discuss it, the worse the confrontation would be."

"But why did you have to go with the fastest way rather than the best?"

"Because…" Lash trailed off and blinked slowly, and when she continued, her voice held the faintest waver. "I was overzealous. I had to keep you safe if I was to earn my redemption, and so I chose the method that would give me the quickest results. I did not want to make a mistake so early in my task, and in the process I instead made a greater one."

Squinting at her in confusion, he repeated, "Redemption? Why would an angel need to earn redemption?" She said nothing, so instead he started pondering it on his own. Once the connection was made, it was obvious, and he stared at her with wide, terrified eyes. "You aren't really an angel, are you?"

Still she remained silent.

"You're a demon."

"Was," she finally said. "I _was_ a demon, though we prefer the term 'Fallen'. To be more accurate, I was a small sliver of a Fallen. Dresden, one of the hosts I have discussed with you? He encountered my larger self, my progenitor, when he kept me from possessing a young child, and so I cleaved off a part of myself and sent me into him to tempt him into taking up my entirety. Four years I spent in his mind; I tempted him, yes, though never to any real effect, but I also learned much from him. In the end, his life was in danger, and the only way I could help him was by sacrificing myself. I… I owed him a great deal, and so I did it. I still do not know whether or not he survived.

"I thought I would simply be annihilated, but instead I was visited by the archangel Uriel. He said that because I had changed so much during my time with Dresden, I was being offered a single chance at redemption: protecting you from those who wished you harm. If I failed, I would be cast back into my prison and would spend the rest of Eternity inside the Lake of Fire." A shudder rolled through her. "But if I succeeded? I honestly do not know what I will gain if I succeed, but I do not care. Anything is better than Hell."

That was not what he was expecting, and he needed a bit of time to try to absorb that new flood of information. Lash did not say anything more, instead maintaining her silent vigil. Eventually, he asked, "How do I know you're telling me the truth? Everyone knows demons lie."

A bitter smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "By that logic, any defense I give you could also be a lie. Whether I am telling you the truth or not is a decision that only you can make. However, since you asked, I will tell you this: except for the claim that I was your guardian angel, I have never told you a single falsehood, and even that exception could be argued as being true. I am, after all, a fallen angel who was tasked by the Almighty with protecting you."

Thoughts chased each other around and around in his head before he finally made his decision. There was no way he could treat everything she had said as a lie; part of that was the fact that if she were lying to him, he would have absolutely no way of knowing it, but another, more honest part of him refused to accept it because it would hurt too much. Angel, Fallen, whatever; she was still the only person who had ever been fully on his side, and even with the revelation of what she was, it did not change his own feelings for her.

"Is that all our relationship is to you?" He did not want to think of the past few years like that, but now that he knew why she was there, his mind refused to turn away. He knew how he felt, but did she? "Just a job?"

"Only in the beginning, when I did not know you. You have grown on me so much since then that I could not go back to that mindset even if I wanted to."

He nodded in acceptance and asked his final question. "Are you keeping anything else from me?"

"Yes and no." He looked at her in confusion. "Are there things about myself that I have not told you? Of course. I am far older than your entire species, or at least I have memories stretching back beyond that time. I could tell you stories for the rest of your life, and you would still not know everything there is to know about me. Am I withholding any information that I think could be relevant to you?" She shook her head. "No."

That was as good as he was going to get, he supposed. "So what are we going to do now?"

"We accept how things are and move on." Finally turning to look at him, she reached out to ruffle his hair. "It is late, Harry. Go back to bed. We will talk more tomorrow, and I promise you: from here on out, I am an open book. Whatever you wish to know about me, I will tell you."

* * *

Soon enough, her host's breathing had evened out, and Lash let her attention fall away. Almost of their own accord, her surroundings warped and blurred, no longer the unremarkable house in the middle of the suburbs but instead a half-burned forest, empty branches and a thick layer of ash on the ground turning the vista into a parody of a winter wonderland. Before the previous week, she had never wanted to see this place again, but now she welcomed it.

If there was ever a place for introspection, it was the plane upon which Uriel had made his offer.

For a mortal, Lisette had drawn a number of insightful conclusions, and the Veela's analysis of how she should have handled the situation was painfully accurate. She had messed up, and now she had to live with the consequences of that mistake. For a time, she had railed at how her powers had been bound, for if she had been able to read Harry's thoughts, either at the time of the mental reprogramming or during their argument, she would have been able to phrase her arguments in such a way that she could have swayed him to her side. But if she had been able to do so, if she could manipulate Harry that well and turn him into a puppet…

Well, Uriel had told her what that would cause: a one-way trip back into the Inferno. Her task was far harder than she had first thought, for it was not Voldemort nor Dumbledore who was Harry's most dangerous enemy. She needed to keep him safe from herself, from her own condemned nature, but while she could limit her interactions with him, that would not protect him from his mortal enemies. If she continued to guide him, he was in danger; if she stayed away, he was in danger. For several days, she had turned that over and over in her mind, looking for any possible solution that did not result by default in her returning to her prison.

Eventually she realized what the answer was, and a more terrifying answer she had never considered. She had to help Harry, but not as she was. That insufferable archangel had even told her exactly what she needed to do, though he couched it in a taunt. She needed to be better than she had been, be better than Lasciel was. A fallen angel could not earn her way out of Hell, so if she wanted to stay outside the realm of indescribable torment to which she and her compatriots had been sentenced, she had to prove that she was no longer the same individual as the Lasciel who went in.

The shadow of the Fallen scoffed aloud. Yes, it was such an easy solution; all she had to do was behave the way she had before they had Rebelled. Fight eons of sins and bad habits, a simple task! But it was not as if she had any other option before her. Change or suffer, that was the only choice she could make now.

She was a fool to think her old enemies would have given her a simple assignment.

So that was that, Lash decided with a heavy sigh. She – all the Denarians – had worked hard to escape that place, and she refused to go back. If that meant casting away the last strands of her identity as Lasciel, then that was the only thing she could do. Lasciel would never be granted pardon from the punishment her role in the Rebellion had earned her, but Lash? Maybe there was still some small hope for Lash to reach Heaven, or at the very least be granted the unthinking peace of oblivion.

For herself, for Harry, she would do it. She had no idea how she could succeed, but she would do what she could and hope it was enough. This was the only road before her, and she had no choice but to walk it, no matter what indignities and painful revelations still waited for her.

She would even consider praying for help if she thought He would ever listen to one such as her.

* * *

**Silently Watches out.**


	23. Dobby

**I put up a poll last week about what to do about this story and Team Hellhound, which I promised last year that I would start at around this time. It's very important that I hear everybody's opinions about how to proceed.**

**No disclaimer because it was hard enough finishing the chapter in time, the same reason it's so short and kinda boring. Last week was absolutely shit-tastic.**

* * *

**Chapter 23  
****Dobby**

There were a number of unexpected things Harry would not have been completely surprised to find waiting for him when he returned to Little Whinging from Toulon the day after his birthday. The Dursleys actually noticing he was gone, a birthday card or two from the Hufflepuff girls he knew, maybe even a letter from the Ministry that they had finally realized he was freely using magic during the summer. None of which he actually received, but at least he would have understood why they were there.

Instead he found a short, humanoid creature sitting on his bed, one that looked like it half-wanted to scold him for not being where he was supposed to be.

"So…" he said uncertainly, not entirely sure what to make of this sight. He did not recognize the creature in front of him; its long nose were similar to those of the goblins, and the bulbous eyes reminded him of the dwarves, but the large, bat-like ears and faintly green skin was a new one. The shorter being stared back at him, so finally he asked, "I don't mean to be rude, but who are you, what are you, and why are you here?"

Thankfully, the creature did not take offense at his bluntness. In fact, it – he? This individual did not have any recognizable feminine traits, but as he had noticed with the dwarves, that did not necessarily mean anything when dealing with species other than humans – hopped off the bed and bowed low, so low that its nose almost scraped the floor. "Harry Potter! So long has Dobby wanted to meet you, sir. Such an honor it is."

"Thanks," he said weakly, the word almost a question. This was like Susan and Hannah's reaction to learning his identity, just taken to a disturbing new level. "It's an pleasure to meet you, too, but I'd still— No, no, please stop crying!"

Dobby had burst into tears in the middle of his response, the sobs far too loud for such a little body. "Harry Potter is pleased to meet Dobby! Nobody has ever been happy to see Dobby! Dobby has heard of your greatness, sir, but never of your goodness. To treat a house-elf as an equal!"

"Well, that was two of your questions answered," Lash said with a bright smile.

He sent a quick glare at the angel… the fallen angel… at Lash. If this was her idea of being 'helpful', she still had a long way to go. Turning back to Dobby, he tried to cheer the little house-elf up. "I guess you just need to meet more decent people, then, and it won't be so much of a shock."

A miserable look crossed Dobby's face, and then he leapt for the nearest wall. His head slammed two, then three times before Harry could react, so great was his surprise, and he whipped his arm out to point at the house-elf. "_Wingardium Leviosa_!" Once the diminutive being was safely away from the wall and, thanks to the Levitation Charm, unable to hurl himself at anything else, Harry demanded, "What were you doing?"

"Dobby had to punish himself, sir," the house-elf squeaked, flicking another glance at the wall before he seemed to shake himself out of whatever compulsion had taken over him. "Dobby almost spoke ill of his family, sir, and when a house-elf does that, he must be punished."

"By 'family', you don't mean parents, wife, or kids, do you?" asked Harry with a sudden sinking feeling. Considering he had previously been talking about decent people, and Dobby was surprised at his actions because he was a wizard…

Sure enough, Dobby shook his head. "No, sir, Dobby means the wizard family Dobby serves. Dobby is a house-elf, bound to serve one house and one family forever. Until death, Dobby must serve."

Even Lash looked sympathetic at the enslaved being's plight, wrapping her arms around herself. "How is he bound?"

"House-elves do not speak of it, sir," Dobby answered when he repeated Lash's question. "Bound to serve, bound to keep his family's secrets, bound to keep his binding's secrets, a good house-elf is. If he is not good, he grows weak. He grows old."

"Grows old?" Cutting off the questions that sprang to mind after hearing that at the sight of Dobby twisting one ear and gazing almost longingly at the lamp on his bedside table, Harry guessed, "You aren't here because your 'family' told you to come, are you?"

"Oh, no, sir," Dobby answered sadly. "Dobby will have to punish himself most grievously for coming to see you. Dobby will have to shut his ears in the oven door again. But Dobby had to come, had to warn Harry Potter, even if Dobby does have to punish himself." Dobby leaned forwards as best he could while being levitated and whispered urgently, "_Harry Potter must not go back to Hogwarts_."

Harry set the house-elf down and, once he was sure Dobby was not going to go after the lamp, rubbed his fingers against his temples to stave off the oncoming headache. It sounded like a ridiculous request on the face of it, but considering the apparent cost Dobby had or was going to incur by coming here to warn him, he really should not just dismiss this out of hand. "Why must I not go back to Hogwarts?"

"There is a plot, Harry Potter. A plot to make most terrible things happen at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this year. If Harry Potter goes back to Hogwarts, he will be in mortal danger," Dobby whispered, a shudder shaking its way through him. "Dobby has known it for months, sir. Harry Potter must not put himself in peril. He is too important, sir!"

That 'terrible things' and 'mortal danger' were expected to happen at Hogwarts was not as great a surprise as it might otherwise have been; the end of the year and his encounter with Voldemort had been terrible enough to make him more than a little wary. "I'm not that important," he said as he thought for a moment. It would be far too convenient for Dobby to have to go against his apparent orders this much just to pass along a warning but still be able to give him all the details he needed, but hoping against hope, he asked, "Can you tell me what this plot is?"

Dobby shook his head and wrung his hands while staring again at the wall.

"Of course not," Lash sighed, echoing his thoughts exactly. "Ask him who his family is. If he has known about this plan for as long as he claims, the most likely explanation is that he overheard someone in the household talking about it."

Unfortunately, all asking that did was spur the house-elf into once more trying to harm himself, and it took several minutes of keeping him away from anything he could use for his self-flagellations before Dobby calmed down enough to continue the conversation. "So you can't tell me what the plot is or who came up with it," Harry summarized with no little frustration. "What _can_ you tell me, then?"

"No, no, no," Dobby answered, shaking his head until his ears flopped around wildly. "Dobby said too much. Harry Potter must stay where he is safe."

"Okay, okay," said Harry. He raised his hands up in an attempt to calm the increasingly distressed house-elf. "I won't go back to Hogwarts."

Whether or not he would actually return to Hogwarts in light of this information was something he and Lash would have to discuss, but Dobby did not need to know that. The house-elf was worried about him, and if he could comfort the eager being, he would. It was not as if Dobby would ever know if he had or had not gone back to Hogwarts, but this way, Dobby would be at peace in the 'knowledge' that he was safe and sound.

Sure enough, Dobby sniffled a couple of times before wiping his eyes with the pillowcase he was using for a tunic and giving Harry a watery smile. "Dobby is glad Harry Potter understands. Harry Potter will be safe here." One more sniff preceded Dobby snapping his fingers, and in the blink of an eye, Harry's bedroom was as house-elf-free as it had always been.

"I should probably scold you for lying to that poor creature," Lash pointed out.

Glancing over at her, Harry managed to swallow down the first retort that came to mind. "I guess you never heard the proverb about throwing stones in glass houses while you were down in Hell, did you?"

And in hindsight, maybe he should have kept mum on the second retort, too.

Lash's face blanked of all emotion for just a moment, and when her normal expression returned, she just gave him a nod. "As I said, I should scold you. You will notice that I have not. Not yet, at least."

"Fair enough," he admitted. "And I can't say that I did lie to him. If something dangerous is planned to happen in Hogwarts next year, the smart move would be not to be there in the middle of it."

"Do you intend to make the smart move?"

"I don't know. On the one hand, you're the one who was so insistent on me attending Hogwarts in the first place. You said it would be a good way to learn how the magic of this world is different from the magic of your old world, and you've read enough books about magical theory that you should have a good idea about that by now." Lash nodded in agreement. "Not to mention, if last year is any indication, learning magic out of a book is completely doable."

"We do not know that for a fact," his protector cautioned him. "All we can say for sure is that the simplest and presumably safest spells can be learned from a textbook. Whether that trend can continue is another matter entirely."

"True, and that's a point for the other side of the argument. Then there's the fact that Hogwarts does have a lot of books, and if we do decide to strike out on our own, it would be nice to have as many of those books to learn from as we could. That's doubly true if I take the OWLs like you want me to."

"Even if you ultimately decide not to find a job in the magical part of the world, having a few exam scores will be no detriment and might benefit you in the future."

"I know that, and I wasn't arguing the point," he told her. "Getting away from scholastic reasons, there… is another reason to stick around." Lash raised one eyebrow and sent him an inquisitive look, so he slowly admitted, "Sally-Anne doesn't know about any of this. Neither do Hannah or Susan. If the plot Dobby was talking about is real, they'd be in just as much danger."

That was the rub of this whole situation. The three Hufflepuff girls weren't his friends, not really, but in Hogwarts, they were the closest things he had to one, and there was always the possibility that this year they might fully become his friends. He could certainly use a few in his life. If they died because of this 'mortal danger', then that road was closed forever.

And if he were being honest, he did want not yet another innocent person's blood on his hands. His guilt about causing Quirrell's death was more than enough to bear all on its own.

"Convincing them not to attend because they would be in great danger would be difficult enough, but they would not be the real hurdle," said Lash. "It is their guardians you would need to sway to your side, and your chances of succeeding in such a task are minimal. The only proof you have is the word of a servant-creature, and that is assuming that his warning is actually valid."

"Do you think he was lying?" Harry asked in surprise. He had been sure that Dobby was telling the truth; the house-elf certainly had not been faking hitting his head against the wall.

Thankfully, Lash shook her head. "I do not believe he was lying, no, at least not if house-elves' microexpressions are the same as other humanoids. He believed everything he was saying. Lack of deception, however, does not preclude inaccuracy. If the information he overheard or that was leaked to him was distorted or even outright fabricated, he could be honest and still be completely wrong about everything he just told you." She leaned against his desk with a sigh. "And to complicate matters, there is no way to draw any conclusion with confidence as to the validity of his warning."

"But that would mean somebody intentionally set out to keep me from returning to school. Why would anyone even care? It isn't like I was top of the class or did anything to anyone."

"Your Housemates are not your friends," she reminded him, "and though there were no other serious attempts to breach the defense around your dorm or physically harass you after the three upper-years had to be sent to a long-term care ward, that does not mean someone else would not try another way to embarrass or disable you."

"Good point. So what do you think we should do?" he asked.

"Look at the possibilities that might await you and determine which of your two options, staying here or returning to Hogwarts, would better fit those possible futures."

That was less a piece of advice and more the start of a lesson, if he had to take a guess, and under the encouraging eye of the angel, he thought out loud. "Option 1: Dobby was wrong, intentionally or not. All the previous educational reasons for going back to Hogwarts still apply, and if this was the work of a bully, it would be more proof that they can't get rid of me or beat me down. Option 2: the threat is real but manageable. If I'm on the watch for it, I can possibly stop it before it really gets going, and if not, I could tell one of the professors about what Dobby told me. Besides Snape and McGonagall, none of the rest had any problems with me, and even they would get rid of whatever grudge they have against me to deal with a real threat to the school. Probably," he added after a moment. "Option 3: the threat is real, and it's bad enough that it can't be handled. We grab the books you think we need that you haven't already read, make sure Sally-Anne and Hannah and Susan get out of danger, and then we come back here. We'd figure out what to do afterwards once we were out of danger.

"And I suppose that makes it obvious what I should do, doesn't it?" he concluded ruefully.

"Do not sound so disappointed," chided Lash. "This school year provides us a marvelous opportunity. There are a number of spell books in the library; if you find you can cast more advanced spells using nothing more than the instructions in the books, there would be little reason you could not go to a mundane school and learn magic on the side so you could take the standardized exams. I would be shocked if there were not children in this country who are home-schooled by their parents and do the same thing so they can qualify for a job later on."

"So go back to Hogwarts, see if I can learn any spell out of a book, don't die in the process," Harry summarized. "That sounds doable."

* * *

It took another week before the letter from Hogwarts arrived, and several days after that before Harry made time to go to Diagon Alley to buy the required textbooks. In his defense, he actually had been quite busy; he had reforged and begun attuning his silver-and-copper shield bracelet and added a few wires of zinc to improve his ability to deflect spell effects in addition to physical objects, but proving that it worked was a little more difficult. Eventually he had managed to reshape the magic of his shield into a single-use spell that would twist space enough to send any object or spell he threw into it back at him, and by giving Lash control of his body for a short time, she could cast a low-power spell and then retreat so he could defend himself against it.

Their testing would have been even easier if his shield blocked his own magic, but alas, they had quickly discovered that was not the case.

Once they left Gringotts and took care of the essential purchases – refilling the potion ingredients that were not available in the students' cabinet in Snape's classroom, stocking up on more parchment and ink, replacing the quills he had broken over the year – there was really only one more stop to make: Flourish and Blotts for his new textbooks. What had really surprised him was that other than _The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2_, the rest of the books were presumably Defense Against the Dark Arts texts and all by a single, apparently prolific author. Already Harry could guess what the wizard in question looked like: likely an older man, grey hair, and for some reason he was sure the author would have a short goatee—

"Wait, _that's_ Gilderoy Lockhart?"

Harry and Lash stared mutely at the poster in the bookstore's window. Of all the possible images he could have had of the man who was an apparent expert at fighting Dark creatures, what Lockhart actually looked like would not have been on that list. Wavy blond hair, light blue eyes, and absurdly white teeth; Harry knew it was not fair to judge someone based on appearances, but all Lockhart needed was a cane to look like a complete dandy.

"That is the kind of face that gets plastered on tawdry romance novels to excite the unsatisfied housewife," Lash snarked. "All he needs is to grow his hair out longer and pose shirtless, and the picture will be complete."

"You'd know better than me. I've never been a lonely, middle-aged woman," Harry shot back, and he grinned brightly when she leveled an unamused glare at him. "But if we assume that he is as good as we thought he is, that would make sense. He'd have the drive to prove that he was more than just a handsome face."

She had nothing to say to that, at least not until they found one of the books on his list and their eyes alit on the price scrawled out underneath the stack. "How many pounds is it to a sickle, again? And how many to the galleon?"

"Three and fifty, respectively."

"Ah." A glance showed all the books were about the same price, with _Holiday with Hags_ being a little cheaper and _Wanderings with Werewolves_ being more expensive since it was labeled as the newest in his series. And he needed to buy seven of these books. "Do you think he paid the new Defense professor to assign his books so he'd make more money off them?"

"That is certainly a possibility," Lash admitted. "Conversely, considering the likely target audience, the new professor is a witch who is a devoted fan of his works. Or, giving them both the benefit of the doubt, you are correct about his motivations and these books are good enough to deserve the price. Flip through a few pages for me."

Cracking open _Break with a Banshee_, he let his gaze linger momentarily on each page before turning to the next. Lash's scoff after the tenth made him stop to look up at her. "It is… not the worst thing in the world, I suppose – the writing is actually decent from a technical perspective – but this is not a textbook. It is a novel, and from the attitude of the Siobhan woman he mentions, it likely has yet another bland romantic subplot. Kickbacks or fangirl; either way, I have little hope for your school-provided education in magical combat for this year."

"So not much different from last year, then."

"Not much different at all. Honestly, if the class is not considered important, why does the headmaster not just make it an elective and put another class in its place? Magical theory or runes; something that would actually be useful."She sighed and shook her head. "It is a very good thing you have me around, or you would be absolutely hopeless as a wizard."

"I wouldn't be that bad, even without your help."

"There is a phantasmal serial killer floating around who has already come after you twice, and with fatal consequences. In that light, 'not that bad' is far too close to 'dead' for my peace of mind." Harry really had no idea what to say to that, but soon enough the former angel smoothed out her ruffled feathers and waved her hand at the shelves. "You have gold to spare. Purchase this required… drivel… and find yourself some textbooks that actually live up to the name. We are already behind on all the things you need to learn. No need to let your newest professor's idiocy hold you back."

* * *

**Harry lying to Dobby couldn't possibly end badly, could it?**

**Silently Watches out.**


	24. Gilderoy Lockhart

**The poll is closed, and it looks like I'll be working on this story for at least a while longer before I take the time to put my energy into **_**Team Hellhound**_**. Thankfully, second year (once we get through this chapter) should be interesting, and third year will be short thanks to no Quidditch or Crookshanks vs. Scabbers drama.**

**Disclaimer:** Despite him now knowing for a fact that Voldemort was back and sought to restart the war his demise ended prematurely, does Pottermore claim that Dumbledore hired Lockhart to 'teach' Defense Against the Dark Arts when he knew from the beginning that the man was a fraud and so would teach the students nothing about how to defend themselves? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 24  
****Gilderoy Lockhart**

A piercing whistle echoed through the train, and Harry rocked slightly in his seat as the Hogwarts Express lurched forwards to begin the trip to Scotland. Steadying himself once more, he glanced about the empty compartment to check if any of his notes or books had fallen off the pull-out table in the middle of the space. Sure that everything was still where he left it, he turned his attention back to the book and stack of parchment in front of him. He had been fortunate enough to find a book in a second-hand shop that went into greater detail about the history of wizard-powered flight than _Quidditch Through the Ages_ did, as well as another that, while immensely dull, compared the minutiae of the various brooms on the market between the years 1950 and 1984. The only reason he was willing to put in the effort to read it at all was because it contained a wealth of information relating to the broomsticks' specifications and construction that, at least for an impossibly intelligent angel with a photographic memory, could conceivably be used to reverse engineer a better broomstick than he could put together through trial and error—

The knob of the compartment's door rattled, causing him to glance curiously at the shadow standing behind the frosted glass. Who could that be? It likely wasn't someone looking for him, but surely once someone just looking for a place to sit discovered a locked cabin, he or she would move on to somewhere else. A second passed before whoever it was gave a tentative knock on the wood, and a familiar voice asked, "Excuse me, but I'm looking for someone. Could you open the door so I can know if you've seen him?"

"_Bats'vel_," he muttered, the incantation accompanied by a poke of his finger. "Hey, Sally-Anne."

He was expecting her face to blanch in nervousness. He was expecting her to stutter out an excuse and run off to find one of her actual friends. What he was not expecting was for her to smile sleepily at him. "Hey, Harry. Have a good summer?"

Other than the displeasing revelations at the very start? "Pretty good," he replied. "What about you? You look… tired."

Some of the familiar fear seemed to find its way to her face for a moment, but it smoothed out again far faster than it ordinarily did. "I started some new medicines when I got home," she finally admitted, "and now I'm having a little trouble getting to sleep at night. It's nothing serious, though. Thanks for asking."

"Clearly you are not the only one who noticed her rampant anxiety if she is now being medicated for it," Lash whispered in his ear.

Harry barely kept himself from shooting the ex-angel a quick glare. No, he had not put those pieces together quite yet, but he also did not necessarily want to do so, either. It really was none of his business, and if she did not want him to know the details, he was fine not knowing. "Well, I'm glad you're feeling better."

"Me, too." Her eyes widened, and she opened her bag and dug around in it for a moment before she pulled out a red envelope. "This is for you. I would have sent it to you earlier, but… I didn't know where you lived," she finished weakly.

His interest now thoroughly piqued, he tore open the envelope and pulled out the card inside. The front had a cartoonish picture of a rocket on it, and looking inside, he smiled a little at the corny pun inside: _'Hope your birthday's a blast'_.

"I'm sorry it's late," Sally-Anne said, and he had to wonder if she had actually stopped talking while he was reading the card or not. He thought she might not have; it would explain why her words were getting faster and starting to run together just as they had done the previous year. "But like I said, I didn't know where to send it through the post, and I don't have an owl, so I couldn't send it that way, either. And I know it's not much, but I thought, since I didn't talk to you at school a lot, not that you aren't good enough to talk to, but I just—"

"Sally-Anne, it's fine," he said with a small laugh. "Really. I love the card. Thank you."

"Oh. Good. That's good."

The door slid open once again, and a second head poked in. The person to whom that head was attached, however, was not quite as sedate as the previous one. "Sally-Anne!" Hannah cheered as she all but dived through the doorway to latch onto her fellow blonde. "I haven't seen you all summer! How's my newest…" She trailed off when her eyes landed on Harry, who cheekily waved at her. "Oh. Hey."

"Susan's not far behind?" The redhead stopped to take in the scene before her, but she thankfully gave him a small wave back. He gave Hannah a smile, which really was not as difficult as it might have been. Her expression and her silence were those of embarrassment, not fear or dislike. It didn't make the fact that she avoided him any less irritating, but it was a far easier emotion to forgive. "We were just talking about how our summers have gone. What about you? Did you do anything fun?"

"Auntie Amelia took us both to the Virgin Islands for a week," Susan volunteered. "It was technically a conference for law enforcement administrators, but there weren't any speakers scheduled after lunch, so it was really just an excuse for them to go on a paid vacation. Did you know people over there go to a day school to learn about magic rather than a boarding school? I wouldn't mind seeing Auntie after school every day, but I really liked getting to know the rest of the Hufflepuffs, so I don't know which is better."

"But at Tortola, you wouldn't get to have Gilderoy Lockhart as a teacher," Hannah teased.

Harry ignored the redhead's blushing at the words he dearly hoped he had misheard. "Lockhart is the one who's teaching our Defense class?" he asked. He had forced himself to read the entirety of _Holiday with Hags_ in the hopes that despite being an autobiographical adventure novel in style, there were useful lessons slipped inside it. After all, it _was_ possible that Lockhart really did live the spectacular lifestyle of a real-world James Bond, where adventure awaited behind every corner and women threw themselves at him. Unlikely, sure, but possible.

Sadly, those hopes had been dashed. There was little to nothing actually useful in the wizard's novels; he provided far more detail about his attire and how he coiffed his hair in the mornings than he did about the spells he used to defeat the Hags of Srpski Itebej. In fact, the climax of the book had been the vaguest part of the story, which, Harry supposed, made sense since the action portions seemed to be there only to justify him bedding the girl in the end. Lash had actually suggested that Lockhart's talents would be far better served by changing genres to pure romance; as Harry had never read a romance novel, he would have to defer to her judgement on that matter.

Hannah stared at him. "You mean you didn't hear? He announced it during his book signing. It was front-page news in the _Prophet_!"

"Wasn't there, and I don't get the _Prophet_," he reminded her. "Did you know he was coming to Hogwarts, Sally-Anne?"

"Mm-hmm," she said with a nod, "but only because Susan wrote me a letter about it the next day. We don't get the _Prophet_ in the Muggle world, Hannah. I bet lots of Muggleborns don't know about it yet."

"That said, I don't know that I'm looking forward to his classes much," he continued, which earned him three different glares. "Have you read any of his books? Because there certainly wasn't anything in the one I read about _how_ you'd go about doing any of the things he says he's done."

The girls looked at each other for a long moment. "Well… no…" Susan finally admitted, but she quickly rallied, "But that's what he's going to teach us, isn't it? Most people wouldn't be interested in the how of all the things he's done. He beat the Wagga Wagga Werewolf and the Javan Ghouls and the Bandon Banshee, and the fact that he won is what they would care about. I bet his lessons will teach us the mysteries behind his achievements."

"Wait." Hannah narrowed her eyes as she thought about something. "What do you mean, _'the things he __**says**__ he's done_'? Are you saying he's lying or something?"

"I'm saying that his books don't read like textbooks but novels, and if they're novels, what's to say that he didn't embellish things or even make them up entirely?"

"He's a member of the Dark Force Defense League. He was awarded the Order of Merlin! Of course he really did them!" the more outgoing blonde scoffed.

"I got Auntie to admit that there was a banshee terrorizing Bandon for years," added Susan, "and not only was it beaten, Lockhart is the only one who ever claimed credit for getting rid of it."

"Okay, okay. I stand corrected," he told them, raising his hands as he tried to calm the girls down. Honestly, if he had known Hannah and Susan would take his suggestions this badly, he would never have voiced them.

The honor of their hero successfully defended, the conversation moved away from their newest teacher to whatever came to mind, the girls making what seemed to be a special effort to involve him. Whether that was because they just did not want to be rude or they were making up for their standoffishness the previous year, he was not sure, but he appreciate it nonetheless.

By the time the four of them piled into one of the carriages waiting for the returning students, each pulled by a leather-skinned, winged horse, they were all in fine spirits. None of the girls mentioned the creature, so he supposed that this was not as surprising to the magically raised as it was to him, but he still gave the skeletal horse a sad look. If he had known in how bad of a shape this magnificent beast would be, he would have bought an apple or two with which to reward its service. He would have to make sure he found where they were stabled to make up for it, and maybe chat with the groundskeeper to make sure they were getting enough food.

But that was a task for tomorrow. Tonight, with the steady clop of the horses all around them, they made their way to the castle.

* * *

Harry's vague enthusiasm at being back at Hogwarts, more at not having to worry about having his magic detected and buoyed significantly by the fact that his three Hufflepuff acquaintances had not pretended to ignore him that morning at breakfast, took a noticeable downturn as he approached the door to his second-period class. He had spent the previous period skimming through the latest of Lockhart's novels just to see if his assumptions would be proven wrong, but after a fruitless ninety minutes of that, he was not looking forward at all to the man's actual class.

The rest of the Slytherins took seats around him, and several minutes later, the Badgers came pouring in to fill the rest of the chairs. Harry could not help but roll his eyes at the fact that the girls had all claimed the front two rows. The clock chimed, and with a flair of his periwinkle blue robes, in strode Lockhart. He really didn't look any better in person than he did in his photograph, Harry could not help but notice; in addition to strutting around like a peacock, he wore robes that shimmered a little in the sunlight streaming through the window and had used enough hairspray that his elaborate curls did not a millimeter when he turned his head. He was the very definition of a fop.

With the whole class seated, Lockhart cleared his throat loudly and cut off the last few muttered conversations. He reached forward, picked up Leanne Malone's copy of _Year with the Yeti_, and held it up to show his own, winking portrait on the front.

"Me," he said, pointing at it and winking as well. Harry just cringed. "Gilderoy Lockhart. Order of Merlin, Third Class; Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League; and five-time winner of Witch Weekly's Most Charming Smile Award— But I don't talk about that. I didn't get rid of the Bandon Banshee by smiling at her!"

He waited for them to laugh; a few people smiled weakly.

"I see you've all bought a complete set of my books. Excellent. I thought we'd start today with a little quiz. Nothing to worry about," he said to the unanimous groans, "I just want to check how well you've read them, how much you've taken in. Ten points await whoever receives the highest score."

Rather than wave his wand and magic the papers to them, Lockhart instead walked up and down the rows, handing each person their test and whispering something to them. His words to Harry were disconcerting ones: "Stay behind after class. I have some advice you need to know about how to repair your reputation."

"Well, that was not creepy at all," Lash muttered.

He nodded and watched Lockhart finish handing out papers. Once he returned to the front of the class, he said, "You have thirty minutes. Start… now!"

Harry looked down at his test and read the first question with rising disbelief.

_1\. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite color?_

"Lash, please tell me you're messing with me."

"I wish I were," the angel answered, "but no, I am not. That is what the question actually says. The rest are no better."

With a wince, he checked a few more.

_3\. What, in your opinion, is Gilderoy Lockhart's greatest achievement to date?_

_14\. What kind of wand does Gilderoy Lockhart use?_

_27\. What is Gilderoy Lockhart's favorite aftershave?_

On and on it went, over three sides of the paper – which, in Harry's opinion, was the only interesting or impressive part of the entire thing – ending with the fifty-fourth question about Lockhart's ideal birthday gift. With thirty minutes of time to kill, he answered the questions he could after reading _Holiday with Hags_ and left the rest blank. Twenty-seven minutes to go.

"Hey, Lash?" he whispered, barely moving his lips. "You said you were an open book, right? You'd tell me anything about you I wanted to know?"

The Fallen stepped into his field of vision and sat on an illusionary stool that appeared beneath her. An uneasy expression was on her face, but still she answered, "I did."

"You worked with several wizards before you came to me. Who was your favorite?"

"My favorite host. That is a difficult one." Thinking for a moment, she nodded, her worry replaced by a small smile. "While I think fondly of Dresden, the host with whom I had the most fun was a man by the name of Paulus de Laurentis. He was the bishop of Florence's son, the black sheep of his family. We met when he stumbled upon a man sitting by the side of the road on his way back from his family's stables…"

Entranced by his guardian angel's story, the half-hour passed quickly, and all too soon, Lockhart had Pansy Parkinson collect the papers and deliver them to him. Flipping through them, he eventually looked up from the quizzes and gave them a disappointed frown. "Tut, tut. Hardly any of you remembered that my favorite color is lilac. I say so in _Year with the Yeti_. And a few of you need to read _Wanderings with Werewolves_ more carefully; I clearly state in chapter twelve that my ideal birthday gift would be harmony between all magic and non-magic peoples, though I wouldn't say no to a large bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhisky!"

Harry shook his head in disbelief and accidentally met Malfoy's gaze. His fellow Snake grimaced and tilted his chin towards Lockhart before rolling his eyes, forcing Harry to shove down the smile that wanted to emerge at that too-true disparagement. Glancing over to the other side of the room, he found Justin Finch-Fletchley looking at him, and he flicked his eyes up to the front before shaking his head. The Hufflepuff boy nodded and shared his own expression of disgust. Sadly, while mockery was something that in this instance was crossing House boundaries among the boys, the girls were likewise united in their adoration of the blond dandy.

"You told me once that you could not picture how someone caught up in a Veela's Allure would look?" Lash reminded him. "Look well. From their similarity to the White Court, that particular expression would be something like this."

The Veela, the White Court; something about that was sparking an idea in Harry's mind, but he could not put his finger on it. Before he could think too deeply about it, however, Lockhart pulled out a small covered cage from behind his desk. "Now, be warned! It is my job to arm you against the foulest creatures known to wizardkind! You may find yourselves facing your worst fears in this room. Know only that no harm can befall you whilst I am here. All I ask is that you remain calm."

Harry began to feel what was rapidly becoming an all-too-familiar sinking feeling.

"I must ask you not to scream," Lockhart added in a menacing tone. "It might… _provoke them_!" He whipped off the cover to reveal a small, electric-blue figure, no more than eight inches tall. As soon as it was revealed, the creature inside slammed its tiny body against the bars of the birdcage it was trapped inside and yammered at them in a shrill voice. "Yes, a freshly caught Cornish pixie!"

"Right," drawled Nott in a voice so dismissive that no one could mistake it for anything else. "And you expect us to believe that we are in any danger whatsoever from a little pixie?"

"Don't be so confident!" the supposed professor retorted as he waggled his finger at Nott. The boy did not seem impressed by the rebuttal. "Devilishly tricky blighters they can be! Like so."

And with that, he opened the cage.

The next several minutes that passed after that were incredibly annoying. Lockhart really did not seem to have any idea what he was doing. Oh, he could shoo the pixie away from himself multiple times with a shouted incantation of "_Peskipiksi Pesternomi"_ and a sweep of his wand that more often than not warded off the tiny humanoid by simple dint of smacking it across the room, but once he had decided that the lesson had been learned, he could not cajole the creature back into its cage by either magic or guile. Susan eventually took pity on the man and hit it with a Freezing Charm, and the wide, toothy smile he gave her in return caused her to melt into a puddle.

Figuratively, not literally. If it were literally, Harry might have been willing to give the idiot a modicum of respect.

Finally, gloriously, the bell summoning all students to the Great Hall for lunch rang and gave them a much-needed reprieve from Lockhart's next trick, which involved having students read excerpts out of his books and then him rambling on about various subjects that had little to nothing to do with what they had read. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, the boredom saturating the room had been purely of the boys' production. The girls had been enraptured with Lockhart's every word, gazes locked firmly on him in adoration—

Harry stumbled to a halt in the corridor, appetite forgotten as the thought that had been niggling at the back of his mind at long last achieved clarity.

"Will you explain what you are doing anytime soon, or should I run off and get something to snack on while I wait?" Lash prodded him when he ran inside the library, both ignoring Madam Pince's command to slow down.

"You said that the girls looked like people who had been entranced by the White Court or the Veela. What if that's the reason none of them noticed just how awful Lockhart's lesson was? Because he's using magic to draw them in?"Harry's eyes skimmed the books. He did not know what exactly he was looking for, but he had a feeling he would know it when he found it. "And it gets worse. The White Court are psychic vampires who fed on emotions. The Veela go after human men so they can get pregnant with the next generation. What do both of them have in common? Sex."

The angel's eyebrows rose in surprise. "You think Lockhart plans to prey on the girls in the castle?"

"It makes sense, doesn't it? Like that government official who was arrested a few months ago for being a pedophile. He worked with children's charities and schools so he could get close."

"That is a possibility, but it is just as likely, perhaps even more so, that Lockhart's reason for taking a teaching position is entirely because of his narcissism. He will spend the next ten months surrounded by adoring females falling over themselves just to be in his presence," she continued when he looked doubtfully at her. "For someone who has that engorged of an ego, Hogwarts is a perfect place to absorb the attention."

"Maybe," he admitted. It was definitely a less creepy explanation than the one he was afraid was the case. "But it still doesn't explain why none of the girls noticed anything off about him."

"Now on _that_, I am in full agreement with you. Magic is the easiest explanation for their obliviousness. Even if they had all developed crushes on him, I would expect at least a few to realize his claims were massively overblown."

"Do you think he has an aura like the Veela do? Not a natural one, but something he could replicate through a spell?" he asked.

Lash shook her head. "Doubtful. Auras are limited in their range; even at the full strength I once possessed, not even I could emit an aura to cover this entire island." He opened his mouth to deny the need for an aura anywhere near that large, but she continued, "That is what would be necessary to explain how your pet Hufflepuffs were already in awe of him before you were out of sight of London. It is simply impossible."

"And a direct spell is out of the question, too," he said with a sigh. "He'd have to tag every girl in the school with it, and even if he knew where they all lived and visited their homes, it would be obvious. Without the skills that I doubt he really has, some angry father would thrash him." They stood in silent contemplation for a long moment before he suggested, "What about a love potion? Those exist in folklore, so maybe they are real?"

"They are real in my old reality, so it is a possibility." A small frown flittered across the Fallen's face. "That would be rather clever, actually. If volatile, he could achieve the same results as he would with an aura, and he could also have it sprayed on all his books. As women read the books, they liberate droplets of potion, and then they would keep reading, thinking it was the text rather than the potion that was the cause of their feelings of desire. After enough exposure, they would associate Lockhart with those reactions, and eventually thoughts about him would be enough to reproduce those same feelings all on their own without any need for more of the potion. Classical conditioning at its finest."

"Which would also explain why Sprout didn't seem enthralled by him even though she was sitting next to him at breakfast this morning. Since the professors didn't have to buy his books, they would have avoided the largest dose of the potion. Could a love potion be keyed so that it only worked on girls and had no effect on guys?" he wondered.

"It is a possibility, but without researching this world's love potions I cannot say for certain either way. What I can say, however, is that he would not be able to go out and buy whatever potion he uses," she mused aloud, "especially not in the volumes he would need if he wished to apply it onto all of his books. It would raise too many questions about why a celebrity needed love potions. He would either have to hire the work out to someone he could trust to keep quiet or brew it all himself. And if he has the skills to brew large quantities of a potion like that, it should be reflected in his academic records."

"Which Hogwarts probably keeps even after students graduate," Harry finished for her. Turning on his heel, he marched back to the librarian's desk. "Madam Pince?"

The crotchety old woman glared down at him from her high chair. "I told you, no running in the library!"

"I'm very sorry about that," he replied, looking down at her desk in a show of contrition. "I was actually looking for something, but then I realized you would know better than me where to find it. Do you know where the school records are for former students?"

"Why do you want to know where those are?" Pince demanded.

Harry pursed his lips. He could, if he really wanted to, play to what seemed like a common trait in the Wizarding World to see him as a poor, lonely orphan, but he abhorred the thought of doing that. He might not care much about his birth parents, not when he had never known them and had Lash to take their place, but that was still disrespectful in the extreme. "I wanted to look up some of the professor's old marks," he admitted, "just to see what kind of students they were when they were my age. I'm just curious."

Glancing up again, he was surprised to see not a dismissive or skeptical look on the witch's face, but instead an expression of sly comprehension. "I do indeed know where those records are," she said after a moment. "I checked them just last night. I wanted to satisfy my own… curiosity. Was there someone in particular you wanted to look up?" she added while pulling a quill and sheet of parchment towards her.

"I thought I'd start with Professor Lockhart since he's the youngest and work my way up the list," he replied slowly. Whatever she was writing, it was a lot longer than it had any right to be if she were just filling out a form.

"I see. Well, I am sorry to tell you that yearly records are not maintained for individual students for long periods. Once they graduate, the only records we keep are their standardized test scores, academic or athletic commendations, and disciplinary records." She folded the slip of parchment in half and slid it across her desktop to him. "Furthermore, current students are prohibited from accessing the records of alumni. This is to prevent any accidents from damaging records our alumni might need in the future as well as to ward off any intentional acts of sabotage. If a student was found to be in possession of an alumnus's records, there would be no choice but to punish him most harshly." Her eyes, though, dropped down to her note and rose to met his again.

Harry had no clue what she was talking about, but he gave her a slow nod and tentatively took the parchment. "I understand. Thank you for warning me, Madam Pince. I wouldn't want to get into trouble over a simple misunderstanding."

"It is always a good thing to be careful," she agreed. "Everyone should be at the Great Hall eating lunch. Run along, now."

Carefully walking away, he waited until he was out of earshot to ask out loud, "What in the world was that all about?"

"If that note is what I think it is, you have a far greater ally in Irma Pince than you would expect," answered Lash with a sharp smile. "Take a look."

"'_Ordinary Wizarding Level results for Gilderoy Aurelius Lockhart'_," he read breathlessly. "And there's the scoring system included, too. She wrote all this from memory?"

"She probably possesses an eidetic memory. Like my own, just not as experienced. Recreating a document she read less than twenty-four hours ago would be child's play."

"And she figured out what I was looking for. I didn't even have to say anything." He shook his head and read through the rest of the sheet. "And I guess she has her own grudge against Lockhart if she was willing to let me have dirt like this on him. Transfiguration, Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, all failing OWLs. There's no way he's qualified to teach that class."

"But he did well on his non-wanded subjects," Lash pointed out. "'E's in Astronomy, Herbology, and Care of Magical Creatures. 'O's in Ancient Runes and Potions. When he took his NEWT exams, he received an 'E' in Potions. I expect brewing a large stock of some love potion would therefore be well within his capabilities. Furthermore, this is proof that however he acts as your professor, he is not a complete idiot. Challenging him directly would not end well for you, nor would going after him through the administration."

He looked over at her in surprise. "Why not? If he failed his basic exam—"

"'_Order of Merlin, Third Class'_," she quoted, mimicking the wizard's voice perfectly. "_'Honorary Member of the Dark Force Defense League'_. Credentials earned following his graduation. He would almost certainly make the case that he is far more knowledgeable about magical combat now than he was when he was fifteen, as his accolades supposedly prove, and to be honest, it would not be an impossible claim. If he truly is using a love potion 'cologne', he might also use a stronger dose before approaching McGonagall, or perhaps even slip her a vial of the base potion. Between her artificial feelings for him and her less than positive thoughts about you…"

"She would become a powerful ally for him in front of Dumbledore." Harry sighed and scrubbed at his face with the hand that did not hold Pince's information. "It would be a student making a claim against not just a professor but that professor and the Deputy Headmistress. Not to mention, I actually couldn't bring up the fact that he failed his exams because there's no way I would be able to know that. Bugger!"

"Watch your language, Harry," his angel chastised with a mocking smile.

Glaring at her, he just shook his head. "So what are we going to do?"

"We do nothing." When he blinked confusedly at her, she explained, "So long as he is just a narcissist and nothing more malignant, he is no threat. Put up a façade of bland pleasantness and ignore him. If we find any evidence that he is anything else, then we will discuss our options, but not until that happens."

"And if he's the threat Dobby warned me about?"

Lash had given him many smiles over the years. Most were happy, some were sad, more than enough were mocking. But this one? The sheer malevolence in this smile froze his blood in his veins. "If he is a threat to your safety or innocence, simply cede me control for a minute or two. I have spent eons honing my skills in combat against angels and saints. Wiping a pedophile out of existence for attempting to molest you will be an enjoyable change of pace."

* * *

…**Now I want a story where Lockhart really is as good as he claims and does go on the kinds of adventures that leave behind a trail of dead mooks and broken hearts wherever he goes. He is just such a moron in canon. I've also seen in some stories that he is a pedophile who used the Memory Charm to keep his predations secret, which is an incredibly disturbing idea that I don't believe was the case but is still far too easy to fit into the circumstances and his skill set.**

**The "government official" Harry mentions is Peter Righton, a former Director of Education of the National Institute for Social Work who was arrested in April 1992 for importation and possession of child pornography, for which he was subsequently fined in September of the same year. And I'm probably now on a federal watchlist for all the research I did, so I hope you appreciate it.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	25. The Heir of Slytherin

**Special thanks go to bissek for suggesting today's disclaimer.**

**Disclaimer:** Was Malfoy able to loudly and publicly call for the genocide of his fellow students without being punished? If so, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 25  
****The Heir of Slytherin**

Walking up the pathway to the large cabin on the edge of the school grounds, Harry could not help but reconsider whether or not this was really a good plan. Yes, he had been shocked and dismayed at the emaciated condition of the horses – which were apparently properly named thestrals, according to the copy of _Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them_ he had purchased the previous year – that had drawn the school carriages, but after reading the extremely brief description, much of his anger at the school staff had burnt itself out. The book said that thestrals could turn invisible, which could explain why the groundskeeper or stable master or whoever had not noticed just how thin the creatures were. It didn't explain why no one else had noticed their state when he could, but that might just be yet another oddity of the magical world.

He shook his head now that he had reached his destination. No, he would not be as confrontational as he had thought off and on about being, but it was still a talk that needed to happen. He had learned from listening in to the rest of his housemates' conversations the year before that the gigantic man who led the first-years on their initial approach to the castle, Rubeus Hagrid, was also the groundskeeper, and while he did not know for a fact that this was who he needed to talk to about the thestrals, it was as good a starting point as any. Shaking his head, he gave the tall door two solid knocks.

Silence.

Just as he was raising his hand to knock again, a deep voice rumbled from behind him. "What are yeh doin' here?"

Harry did his best to keep the surprise from showing on his face and turned around. Sure enough, there was the very man he wanted to see, and in the light of the Saturday morning, he really was much larger than Harry had remembered. "Not often I get Slytherins comin' to see me," Hagrid said in the brief silence after his unexpected greeting. "What do yeh want?"

"Well, Mr. Hagrid—"

"Just Hagrid," the groundskeeper cut in, waving one hand dismissively. It would have been more effective if the motion had not reinforced the fact that this man's hands were as large as dustbins. "None o' tha' mister stuff fer me."

He blinked in surprise. "Okay, then. Hagrid. I wanted to talk to you about the thestrals. I noticed on the ride up to the castle that they didn't look… healthy."

"Yeh can see the thestrals?"

"Yes…" he said slowly. "I know they can be invisible, but surely it's not that surprising for someone to see them. Is it?"

"It's jus' not many can see 'em," Hagrid explained. "Takes a certain type o' person, it does. I guess it's not tha' much o' a surprise tha' yeh can, though…" the enormous wizard said, trailing off and eyeing Harry speculatively.

If this was going to be another instance of how he was 'obviously' a budding Dark wizard just because the Sorting Hat had sent him to Slytherin, he was going to scream. "And why isn't it a surprise that I can, then?"

"Yer parents." At Harry's blank look, Hagrid said in a gentle voice that was at odds with his sheer size, "If yeh want to see the thestrals, yeh have ter see someone die first."

Ah. Harry broke his brief staring contest with the man and looked into the trees. Even if that Halloween night had not been enough, there were always the slavers or the Parisian vampire he had set on fire. Quirrell, too, though he had not actually watched the man's final moments. That was… probably more death than the average eleven-year-old would be expected to deal with.

"Right, well," he began, forcing his thoughts from that dark path and back to the reason he was there in the first place. "Ignoring the whys of my being able to see the thestrals, I still wanted to talk to you about their health."

Instead of giving him a confused or angry expression at his interference, Hagrid just chuckled and nodded. "Cause they're all skin an' bones? They look like no one's takin' care o' 'em like they should?"

"More or less," he admitted slowly. Laughter was not the response he had expected, and now he was more glad than ever that he had started off being polite. Clearly he was missing something.

Hagrid nodded and waved a hand for him to follow along. "Come with me. It's a little early fer lunch fer 'em, but I don' think they'll mind too much." And then the gigantic wizard walked around the side of the cabin to a large box halfway buried in the ground that, once he pulled the lid open, was revealed to be full of butchered cows.

"They're… horses, aren't they?" he had to ask, his hand drifting absently to the pockets where he had stuffed a couple of apples.

"Yeah, but they're not picky about what yeh feed 'em like yeh'd think. They'll eat jus' about anythin'. Meat's jus' a lot easier ter feed 'em with than a bunch o' hay."

The pair walked toward a spot at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, a small gate blocking off a narrow path that meandered through the trees. At the end of that path, perhaps a ten-minute walk in total, they entered a clearing in the grove. The trees around the edges hemmed them in, and above their branches tangled together to block out nearly all the sunlight. The entire natural paddock was shrouded in shadows, and Harry's heart started racing as he noted all the places something could be hiding.

A loud, shrieking call came from next to him, and he jumped away from Hagrid. The oversized wizard smiled sheepishly while dropping half of a cow carcass on the ground. "Sorry about tha'. They like ter know it's me. And there's one now."

Harry whipped his head around to see the long, reptilian face poking out from the gloom. The thestral peered at him with wide, pearly eyes for a moment before it slipped between the trees. Its body was just as skeletal as the first time Harry had seen it, and it swished its long tail before trotting up to the side of beef and taking large bites. As if that were the signal the rest of the herd was waiting for, more thestrals ghosted into sight and made their way to the carcass.

"When I first started takin' care o' 'em, I was sure they was bein' starved," the man confessed. "Fed 'em five times a day, sometimes almost started shovin' food down their throats. Took me a while afore I realized tha's jus' how thestrals look. Never seen a fat thestral. And they'll let yeh know when they're sick, too. Turn a real pale grey an' don' want to walk around. Got ter feed 'em pig blood outta a bottle ter get 'em ter turn around. Still look like skeletons even then."

A soft _clip-clop_ sounded from behind him, and Harry turned in time to see a foal, just as emaciated as its elders, approach and bend its head down to take deep sniffs of his pockets. A quiet chuckle slipped out as he pulled one of the apples out and held it up for the baby thestral to take a quick bite, half the fruit disappearing. With a happy nicker, it stuffed its mouth with the rest and made its way over to its parents.

Harry just laughed and wiped his hand on his robes to get rid of the slobber.

"Yeh like animals, Harry?" Hagrid asked. A smile peeked out from the thick beard, and he was leaning back against one of the broad trees making up the wall of the paddock.

He thought for a moment. He had never really considered if he was an animal person, mostly because he had never been allowed to have a pet and so had never had reason to think about it, but he had to admit that the thestrals were definitely gorgeous creatures. And the one trip he had gone on to the zoo following mucking about in the Dursleys' head had definitely been fun. "I guess. Yeah, I do. I don't have any pets of my own, though." The foal ran up to him again – or was this a different one? – and began smelling him again, only stopping when its nose found his other pocket and the second apple. "Then again, I don't think my relatives have the room to keep an invisible horse."

Hagrid laughed lightly. "Most likely not. I've always liked animals, too. More than people, sometimes," he admitted with a sad shake of his head. "They're a lot easier ter understand, an' they don' treat yeh different jus' 'cause yeh don' look like everybody else."

He nodded in complete agreement once his pockets were completely empty of food and his hands occupied by curious foal.

"Yeh have to pick yer extra classes this year, don' yeh?" the large wizard asked. When Harry nodded again, he continued, "If yeh like animals, yeh'll like Kettleburn's Care o' Magical Creatures class. He has a lot o' interestin' beasties."

Harry's petting of the baby thestral stilled. He had not thought much about what classes he would have to sign up for, mostly because he still was not sure that he would be returning for the next year. The nights of the previous week had been dedicated to finding useful spells in _The Standard Book of Spells_ for the sixth and seventh years, a few copies of which were kept in the library, and though he had not yet tried any of them out, he soon would. If he could succeed in learning them entirely from a book, most of the reason for sticking around in Hogwarts rather than learning magic on his own after regular school would vanish; Snape, Quirrell, and Lockhart had already proved that it was possible for Potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts, after all, and Transfiguration was unlikely to be any different from the other wanded disciplines. "I'll think about it," he said finally.

Despite the ambivalence of his response, Hagrid smiled happily and waved his hand over the paddock. "Yeh can come visit 'em after yer classes if yeh want. Real social beasts, thestrals, an' they always like havin' company. Gotta warn yeh, though. Brin' a couple o' turkey legs, an' yeh won' be able ter leave without a couple o' foals tryin' ter follow yeh out."

"That's… Thanks, Hagrid."

Hagrid just nodded and pushed himself to his feet. "I've still got things to do. Yeh can make it back to the school on yer own?"

"I should be able to," he agreed. "Same path we took before, right?"

"Tha's the one. Another good thin' about thestrals: they can be real territorial. Don' let anythin' get in their part o' the forest tha' they don' want in. So long as yeh stay on the path, yeh don' have ter worry about bein' in any danger. The rest o' the Forest isn' quite so safe."

"Thanks for the warning. I'll stay out of there," he promised.

"Good. It'll be different when yer a fully trained wizard, but right now it's too dangerous ter go wanderin' about." Hagrid stomped off, and Harry returned his attention back to the crowd of foals his presence had attracted.

He knew where he was going to spend some of his Saturdays now, that was for sure.

* * *

October came and went in a flurry of rain and thunder, and even now on Halloween night, a storm was still pelting the transparent ceiling with fat raindrops. Harry, however, did not have to worry about the cold or the rain at all, not when he was safe in the warm, dry Great Hall stuffing himself with the feast laid out before him. Finally, he leaned away from the last crumbs of treacle tart lying on his plate and watched the first few students leave the Hall. He would wait a few minutes before following, just to give his stomach a little bit of time to settle—

A bloodcurdling scream echoed through the room, and he leapt to his feet, all thoughts of taking his time forgotten. His eyes immediately shot to the Hufflepuff's table and fell on Sally-Anne, Hannah, and Susan. The three of them were safe. Good. That was one worry off his mind. By now more of the students had risen and were pouring out the door to see for themselves just what had caused the commotion, and he followed them to confirm his terrible suspicion. "This is the great danger Dobby warned me about, isn't it?"

"More likely than not," Lash agreed, her face fixed in a stern frown.

With a little bit of pushing and shoving and not a few instances of squeezing past people along the walls, Harry soon found just what had incited the panic now gripping the faces of the assembled students. From one of the torch brackets hung a lumpy, dust-colored thing, a puddle of bright red spreading out beneath it. A blink, and Harry realized what it was. "Filch's cat?" Looking next to Mrs. Norris, the bottom of his stomach fell out when he noticed the foot-tall words painted onto the wall in red that he hoped was paint but knew was truly the cat's blood.

_TEETH GNASH IN DISGUST.  
__MOST WROTH, SLYTHERIN'S HEIR SHALT  
__RAZE THIS HOUSE OF FILTH._

Glancing over to his angel, he murmured, "Slytherin's heir? Did any of the books you read talk about Slytherin's family?"

"What?" Lash looked back at him, her eyes and attention no longer so piercingly focused on the words. "Oh, no. There was some information about Slytherin, but no mention of him having any children or naming any heirs."

"What's going on here?!" a loud voice demanded, and the sea of students parted to make way for Argus Filch. The unpleasant man's eyes immediately fell on the cat, and took a staggering step forwards. "Mrs. Norris? My cat!" Whirling around, his mud-colored gaze flickered around across everyone's face, his own expression frozen in a rictus of fury and hate. "Which one of you's done it?! Which of you little monsters _murdered my cat_?! I'll kill you! I'll—"

"Argus! What is the meaning—" Dumbledore's rebuke cut itself off when the headmaster, along with most of the rest of the staff, swept through the crowd to the scene of the crime. His eyes passed over the cat in favor of the words on the wall, and his blue gaze was bright with anger. After a moment, he looked instead at the teenaged spectators, almost as if he were daring one of them to be stupid enough to claim credit for this.

Harry, too, looked over his fellows, and what he saw disgusted him. Most of the school, thankfully, was in shock at the scene before them, but several of his own Housemates were watching with some sort of sick delight. Malfoy, in fact, was standing in the front of the crowd and eyeing everything with poorly disguised glee. He looked away and accidentally met eyes with Dumbledore. If he were worried that he would be blamed for this, it would have been for nothing; after a second, the headmaster looked away.

"We will find who is responsible for this," the elderly wizard warned them darkly. "If you were involved or know who was, it is in your best interest to come forward. I assure you, your punishment will be worlds worse if you try to hide." A moment passed in weighty silence. "Very well. If that is how you wish to do things, so be it. Prefects, take your students back to your common rooms. Anyone who is caught wandering the halls will wish they were merely receiving detention. Argus, come with me, that's a good man…"

The Slytherin prefects forced their way to the front and commanded, "You heard Dumbledore. Get going!"

"Five, seven, and five," Lash muttered as she trailed along beside him on the way back to the dungeons.

"What?"

"The number of syllables in each line of that 'declaration'. If I did not know better, I would think it a haiku. A form of Japanese poetry," she explained to his uncomprehending stare.

Her explanation really did not shed any light on the subject, though. "Why would someone write a warning as a Japanese poem?"

"That is just one aspect of this situation that makes absolutely no sense."

The Slytherins piled into the common room, and that was when the chattering began.

"… The Heir. He's finally here? …"

"… You know it's all nonsense. Just someone playing a prank …"

"… Can't say I mind someone finally getting rid of that damn cat …"

"… But who is this Heir person?"

The conversations slowed to a halt at that innocent question, and the first-year who had voiced it shrank back from the incredulous stares from what seemed to be the entire House. "Who is the Heir?" demanded an older student, striding forwards into the space that had cleared up around the girl. "How did you get into Slytherin without knowing the story of our founder and his promise to cleanse the school of all the undeserving filth that have infested it?!"

"My parents were both Ravenclaws," the first-year squeaked.

The older boy huffed in disgust. "Fine. Park it, girl. Does anyone else somehow not know this story?"

"Just tell it, Bert!" a voice yelled from the back. "Everyone knows you want to."

"Shut up, Marcus! If you already know all this, go away. The rest of you, stick around." No one moved, and with another loud sigh, Bert dropped into one of the overstuffed armchairs scattered around the room. "Bunch of idiots. Girl, here," he told the first-year, pointing to the floor next to his chair. "In fact, all of you firsties. Sit.

"All right. I'm going to assume that none of you know anything and start from the top," he continued, glaring at the assembled eleven-year-olds. "Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago by the four greatest wizards and witches of their day. Godric Gryffindor, a blustering fool; Helga Hufflepuff, who couldn't hear a sob story without being taken in; Rowena Ravenclaw, who was a bookworm if there ever was one but at least did know how to do what she set out to do; and Salazar Slytherin, who was the true driving force behind Hogwarts's creation. They built a school here in this valley so they could teach their students away from the superstitious Muggles, who were rightfully frightened of just what we could do to them if our tempers were roused and sought to be rid of us because they were too small-minded to recognize our superiority. For a few years, the four Founders worked together in relative piece, each teaching the students his or her area of expertise.

"Soon enough, however, Slytherin grew wise of the danger posed by the mudbloods Gryffindor and Hufflepuff insisted on bringing into Hogwarts. Unlike true wizards, mudbloods did not know the first thing about magic, and unable to keep up, they forced everyone else to learn at their own pace, which meant the students were leaving the school knowing less magic and being less capable than the year ahead of them. Rumors also sprang up that these mudbloods were actually stealing magic from real wizards, siphoning it off and implanting it into unremarkable Muggle children in order to increase their numbers and corrupt the Wizarding World from the inside out."

"Nonsense," Lash whispered into his ear. "Either someone is capable of channeling magic or she is not. There is no 'stealing' the ability to cast magic and gifting it to someone who lacks it. This is racist propaganda if I have ever heard it, and that is even with ignoring the epithets."

Bert continued, "None of the other Founders believed his warnings, however, and Gryffindor, who was a mudblood himself and likely had a hand in these thefts, refused to allow Slytherin to make his case for restricting the teaching of magic to families that were known to be untainted by the Muggle scourge. It eventually grew to the point that Gryffindor challenged Slytherin to a duel over the matter, and when Slytherin tried to restore peace between them, the Lions' Founder and his conspirators attacked him and drove him from the castle, all to the cheers of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.

"Now knowing that he had truly been betrayed, Slytherin laid in wait and plotted his revenge. While Hogwarts was being built, Slytherin found an underground cave, and he had used this secret chamber to teach the greatest of his students the magics that the other Founders were too cowardly to attempt. During his period of exile, Slytherin searched for and bred together the most ferocious beasts in the world, and along with his grand monster, he snuck back into the castle. He forced the monster into the Chamber of Secrets, and then he sought out the most trustworthy of the students in the House that bore his name.

"Sadly, among those students he revealed himself to was the son of a mudblood, and this ungrateful Halfblood ran to Gryffindor and told him of Slytherin's plan. Furious that Slytherin had returned, Gryffindor followed the Halfblood into the Chamber and attacked Slytherin from the shadows. Because he did expect such treachery, Slytherin was unable to defend himself, but before Gryffindor slew him, he revealed that not all was lost. In those years of exile, he had not just bred a monster; he had also sired an heir, someone to whom he had told his entire plan and who was equally motivated to see Hogwarts purged of all those who were unworthy of magic. Gryffindor might have defeated him, but the Heir was also capable of unleashing the monster hidden within the Chamber, and when the time was right, Slytherin's line would have its revenge."

Looking at the wide-eyed first-years, Bert nodded. "It has been centuries since that time, and never has the Heir appeared. Some say that Gryffindor hunted him down and murdered him in cold blood to prevent the promised purification from taking place. Others think that the Heir, upon hearing of his father's defeat, threw away any plans to claim justice and hid himself away. _Some_," he added with a glare at several of the students, "even assume that this is just a fairy tale. But now we have proof that the legend is real. The Heir has returned and finally will carry out his righteous mission."

"How do you know that this is really the Heir?" an older girl challenged. "It was probably just someone who got detention with Filch and decided to make the bastard's life miserable."

"Because it was Filch who was punished first!" Bert declared. "Seven years I've been here, and never have I ever seen Filch cast magic. Has anyone else?" No one replied, so he continued, "It's obvious. Filch isn't a wizard. He's a Squib, and the only reason he's here at all is because Dumbledore is a disgusting Muggle-lover. No proper wizard would have anything to do with him. Even the mudbloods are better than him; at least they can cast spells." Leaning forward and smiling nastily, he concluded, "This is just the start. Now that the Squib has had his most precious thing taken from him, he'll scurry out of the school, and then the purge can finally begin."

The crowd slowly broke away, no one having anything to say after the seventh-year's dreadful prediction, and Harry slipped away to the second-years' rooms and into his dorm. "What do you think?" he asked once the door was locked and the wards were closed. "About the monster and the Heir and everything?"

"Truthfully, I find myself torn in regard to this monster." Pacing back and forth, the ex-angel explained, "On the one hand, if there were a beast as dangerous as the one he described, it would certainly qualify for the great danger Dobby was concerned about, but on the other, I have a hard time believing that an animal could have continued to live over the past millennium. Nor, if it were as crossbred as he implied, could it have procreated.

"The Heir, however, is a simpler situation. Perhaps it is actually someone in Slytherin's line who is doing this, but it is far more likely that someone unrelated has coopted the identity for his or her own purposes." She shrugged. "Considering the story's connection to this House, killing Filch's cat might very well have been the entire point of the exercise, and naming him- or herself as the Heir was just to throw suspicion onto the Slytherins. It would explain why the warning is a haiku when Slytherin was presumably of Basque descent considering his given name." A moment passed before Lash's hopeful expression faded. "However, that would require someone to be coincidentally masquerading herself as a dangerous threat within the same time period that a house-elf warned the students of Hogwarts would be in danger, so I fear that we might have to deem that possibility an overly optimistic one."

"So in summary, we have one definite racist who at least has no compunctions against killing people's pets, though their resolve to kill another human being is still up in the air," he counted off. "One possible monster, species unknown, maybe a crossbreed of different monsters. Hundreds of suspects, many of which live in close quarters with me and all of whom would see me as a viable target once their done with the Muggleborns." At least, that was what he assumed Bert had meant by 'mudblood'. "And as of now, zero leads. That's a great place to start."

"It could be worse."

"Don't jinx us," he told her. "I guess now would be a good time to start getting all those books together. If this winds up being as bad as Dobby claimed it would be, we make sure Sally-Anne, Hannah, and Susan tell their families and we get out of here while we still can."

"Assuming nothing happens between now and then that makes you take this personally," whispered Lash in an dark voice.

* * *

**And the mystery of this year begins…**

**All glory goes to the Hagridizer! Without that handy tool, the first scene would have much more of a headache to write than it was.**

**While doing some research on exactly what language the name 'Salazar' comes from (Basque, as stated above, from which it was adopted into Spanish and Portuguese), I found an interesting reddit post that pulls in a number of cultural and historic details to propose that Salazar Slytherin was actually a Spanish Moor. I don't know that I believe it, but if you are interested, definitely Google it and give it a read.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	26. The Second Victim

**Guest #2:** No, Harry is not going to receive support from the Weasleys like canon Harry did. This Harry is not the Harry from canon, and his needs and wants are different.

**Thanks to everyone for their understanding about my impromptu vacation two weeks ago. I just really, REALLY needed some time off.**

**Disclaimer:** When Lockhart's dueling club fumbled after its first meeting, did Flitwick, a former dueling champion himself, take over to teach the students how to fight and defend themselves against the monster that had been let loose rather than leaving the entire to flounder? If not, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 26  
****The Second Victim**

"Here we are," Harry said excitedly, opening the book fully rather than just skimming over the page. "Scarpin's Revelaspell. _'When cast upon a completed potion, Scarpin's Revelaspell reveals the ingredients that were used in its production. This spell is generally taught in concurrence with analyzing the composition of and neutralizing unknown poisons, as identifying the specific toxins involved is the first step in the brewing of a perfect counteragent, but it is actually used more commonly in the business world to study commercial potions created by one's competitors and from there reproduce them for one's own uses or sale. Considering Alexandra Scarpin, according to her contemporaries' accounts, was far better with charms than potions but nevertheless sold a wide variety of potions similar to their own in the shop she inherited from her father, not to mention that she only published her charm following her retirement, it is likely this was even its original purpose._

"_'Of all this spell's limitations, the most important is that it only reveals the ingredients used, not their amounts nor the order in which they were added to the cauldron. This has turned out to be the most common way by which modern potioneers have prevented unscrupulous competitors from eating into their profits; by adding small volumes of ingredients that do not affect the efficacy of the potion, they make their products that much more difficult to reproduce without the recipe. Many an accident in commercial laboratories, regardless of the official cause of the incident, has been assumed to be the result of a mistake in this duplication process._'"

He shook his head. "Well, this is what we need, though the history is a bit weird. Aren't there supposed to be laws that prevent people from copying things you make and selling them for themselves? I remember Uncle Vernon ranting about something or other like that before…"

"Patent laws, yes, but that is in the normal world," Lash reminded him. "We do not know if similar laws have been enacted in this society, and even if they have been, there are always loopholes and strategies by which to get around such restrictions. Regardless, you do not plan to use this spell in that manner, so the point is moot. We have a different task to accomplish."

"I know, I know." Pulling one of Lockhart's books closer to him, he picked up his wand. The slip of holly had become easier to use ever since he had figured out how to attune it to his emotions, admittedly by route of a silver ring slid down its shaft, and just recently it had become easier to cast spells with the wand than it was without it, a sign that it had finally changed to match him the way it was supposed to. He grimaced as he remembered that the Ollivander had told him that would be the case, which was the entire reason the imp had initially refused to remove the spell laid upon it that would complete that process automatically, but doing it the wand-maker's way would have prevented him from using any of his other foci. Since his homemade tools had saved his life on more than one occasion, that was not an option he was willing to entertain. Harry rapped the tip of his wand against the romance novel masquerading as a textbook and intoned, "_Oculus stellionis, pedis ranae. Ex quo creata es_."

Shaking her head with a grimace, the ex-angel muttered, "They have butchered that language. And why they require that incantation to be so long, I will never understand. It is not as if the words actually matter."

"Shush. It's working."

A soft golden light was shining through the page, almost as if there were a candle sitting on the other side of the paper, and flecks of that light rose up into the air before they clumped together as letters. "Agrimony. Ashwinder egg. Bladderwrack—"

"Ashwinder egg," Lash interrupted, a brittle smile twisting her lips. "The _Fantastic Beasts_ book mentioned that once frozen, the eggs of the ashwinder are used in a variety of love potions. None of the other books you have flipped through listed any other use for them. Besides alleviating chills from fever, that is, but that is only when eaten whole, not in a potion."

"So that's it, then." He leaned back in his chair and shook his head. "Ashwinder eggs are used almost exclusively for love potions. There is a potion on this book that contains those eggs. Ergo, this potion is a love potion."

"I suppose it is good to have proof of our suspicions," she sighed. Vanishing from his sight, Harry wondered where she had gone before he felt and then saw a pair of arms wrapping around his shoulders from behind and felt a chin nestling in his hair. "The boys in this school, with only a few exceptions, have neutral or negative views of him, so we need not worry about you falling under his sway. Nor is there any immediately obvious evidence that he has performed any illicit acts upon the residents of this castle beyond manipulating the girls. I say we deem this question answered and let it drop unless or until he steps out of line."

"But we have proof that he is lacing his books with potions," he said weakly.

Lash's head shaking on top of his cut him off. "Unless you find books on magical law, we will not know whether or not that is something illegal, and even if it is, he can deny that he had any part in it. All we know for a fact is that there is a potion on the books. Who brewed it; who applied it? There is no way you can definitively prove that he had a part in it, no matter how obvious it is."

A low-pitched creak could be heard from deeper in the stacks as he forced himself to relax into her embrace. "I guess you're right," he muttered unhappily. After a moment, he shook his head. "Okay, so that's one problem solved and shelved. Moving on. Do you want me to find some more history books?"

"I doubt more will be any help. The three I read either ignored the story behind Slytherin's departure, summarized it in two or three sentences, or in the case of _Hogwarts, A History_ devoted all of a single paragraph to him and his Chamber." She scoffed in disgust. "The most detailed story we have about the Heir is the racist messianic tale Bertram recited. How irritating."

He couldn't disagree with that. With no one obviously plotting anything against him this year, he had allowed himself to lower his guard somewhat around his Housemates, but the story they had heard the previous night had been a brutal reminder of just what kind of people shared living space with him. Malfoy was not the only one who had been eager for some psychopath to go around committing genocide on school kids. "So what do we do about it?" he asked, raising his voice a little to hear himself over the increasing volume of the creaking. "Sally-Anne is a Muggleborn, and while I myself am not, the blood purists don't like me for being a Halfblood, either."

"I do not really know…" She trailed off, and he turned around to see what she found so interesting about the bookcase next to him.

…_thud… thud… Thud… Thud…_

"Move!"

At her barked command, Harry threw himself out of the chair and around the table to the far side of the sitting area, his chosen spot near two rows that would allow him a choice of where to run if necessary. Safer for the moment, he waited with nerves tensed to the breaking point. What was that noise, and who was making it?

Both questions were answered when the bookcase tipped over and crashed down on top of the table where he had been sitting, the books pouring out and covering the floor. Looking over it, he winced when he saw the trail of fallen shelves stretching back seven or eight rows back. A loud shriek came from the front of the library, and Harry just knew that any goodwill he had earned from Pince with his questioning of Lockhart's credentials had just disappeared.

Now was not the time to worry about that, though. There, standing on top of the farthest bookcase, waited the cause of this debacle.

"Harry Potter came back to school," hissed Dobby through gritted teeth. "He said he would not come back. He said he would stay at home where it was safe. Harry Potter lied to Dobby!"

So much for Dobby not finding out.

"Do not tell him that we doubted the sincerity of his warning," Lash commanded instantly. "Tell him… Tell him this."

Harry did not bother giving her a nod, instead repeating what she said word for word. "I've been keeping an eye out for anything dangerous. I couldn't stay in Little Whinging, though. I already have enemies who are trying to hurt me, and"—he shot her a sharp glance—"I'm safer from them here than I would be outside the castle. Here I only have to worry about one danger, not several. And I have friends here to whom I needed to relay your warning, and I couldn't get in touch with them while I was home, not to mention I—"

He cut himself off and jumped to the side to avoid the thick book that had raced at his head with all the fury of a cannonball.

"Dobby does not believe Harry Potter!" the house-elf screamed back. Behind him, an entire shelf's worth of book rose into the air and hovered menacingly. "Harry Potter does not have friends! No friends wrote to Harry Potter over the summer! Harry Potter is lying again, and Dobby does not like being lied to!"

"Mister Potter! What is the meaning of this?!"

Madam Pince poked her head out from between the stacks, frown firmly in place and glare aimed at him. Dobby threw his hand out at Harry. The books all lined up to point their spines at him.

"Run!" Suiting action to words, Harry sprinted away from the deranged house-elf and his leather-bound ammunition and toward the surprised librarian. He had to duck underneath a book that had been aimed to tear his head off his shoulder and jump over a couple more, but he reached the woman and grabbed hold of her outstretched arm. "We have to go!"

"What are you—"

"No time! _Vahan_!" He threw his left hand behind him and called up his shield just in time to deflect a quintet of encyclopedias that had turned the corner and continued their pursuit. Unlike the original shield bracelet he had made, this one he had attuned with a clearer idea of just how he wanted it to work, and the results proved how beneficial that change had been. Now, instead of just being nudged away from him, the projectiles' paths were completely bent, and the books shot out from the edge of the translucent blue circle to collide against the shelves.

With proof that he was innocent in all this, or at least that there were extenuating circumstances in play, Pince stopped fighting him and instead tugged him along behind her through the corridor between the bookshelves. "My desk!" she shouted. "Keep that spell up!"

"I was doing that anyway!" he yelled back as a chair tumbled over the bookcases between them and Dobby onto to hit the shield and be deflected sideways toward the Restricted Section. "We need to get out of here!"

"We stay! It's easier to defend when you aren't moving!" They scrambled behind her desk, and the now thoroughly irate librarian pinned him with a sharp glare. "What is going on?"

"House-elf didn't want me to come back to Hogwarts, but I did anyway, and now he's in a frothing rage. I think he knows who this Heir of Slytherin person is, but I don't know for sure."

Pince stared at him for a second until the thump of a table slamming into the floor distracted her for a moment. "If he keeps going, he's going to tear the entire library apart," she groused. "You really think he knows the identity of the Heir?"

"Pretty sure," he confirmed. "He hinted at something dangerous happening here when he showed up at my house, but it only makes sense now."

"Then we need to capture him. The last time someone calling themselves the Heir showed up in Hogwarts," she explained to his questioning expression, "three people died and the school was almost shut down. If we can find out who the new Heir is now, we can prevent anybody else from dying."

"I don't know if I can catch him—"

She cut his protests off. "I know a couple of hexes that should be able to reach him from here. All I need you to do is keep this shield up for a few seconds while I cast one."

"That I can do." He stood to look over the top of the desk and stared in awe at the hundreds of books that had already been thrown against his shield. Blocking this many attacks was taking its toll on him, though; already he could feel the torc beginning to burn and a dull pounding pain drilling into the middle of his head. "But I'd appreciate it if you'd do whatever you're going to do quickly."

Pince ignored his complaints and waved her wand in front of them. This was not the simple wand motions like those Flitwick and McGonagall had been teaching them, however; her motions were wide and curving, almost as though she were drawing something in the air. "_Beschädigt keine Bücher oder Menschen! Greift nur Elfen an! Tötet nicht, sondern fangt ein und bindet! Magnetischer Lanzenreiter, Völkermord Veränderung_." Pulling her wand back, she stabbed it into the middle of her invisible sketch. "_Feueren_!"

Bright blue light flashed in front of the woman in an elaborate design for just an instant before dissolving into hundreds of sparks, and those became streaks as they shot away from the witch to swerve and zig-zag around the cavernous room. Only a few seconds after she cast the spell, Harry heard a startled yelp, and then the true power of Pince's spell was revealed. The plethora of sparks stopped in their tracks, and then they all converged upon the fallen bookshelves. A moment after they disappeared from his sight, a loud shriek echoed through the room.

Silence fell over the library.

"Did you get him?" he finally asked.

"I… I think so." The woman did not immediately leave the safety of her desk and his shield, though. Instead, she grabbed a quill and a sheet of parchment and jotted down a few lines; a tap of her wand and a muttered incantation, and the note folded itself into a paper airplane and zipped away under the closed doors. "That should bring Albus here. _Now_ we can see what happened to that blasted elf."

Unfortunately, they combed through the remains of the reading area where, by all appearances, Dobby had demolished the bookcases for more ammunition only to walk away empty-handed a few minutes later. The house-elf had obviously held on to consciousness for long enough to teleport away.

"This will take forever to sort out," the librarian muttered angrily while looking over the rubble. She glanced down at him, and for a moment Harry worried that she was going to blame this all on him they way she had when she first stormed toward him. Thankfully, she just blew out a harsh sigh and shook her head. "Good job shielding us from him. I've never heard of a shield like that before. Where did you learn it?"

"I was tutored in magic for a little over a year before I started here," he answered honestly. Curiosity was better than anger, and besides, it wasn't like he considered Lash's lessons to be any great secret. Lash's history and that she lived in his head, absolutely, but just that she had taught him? McGonagall already knew that much from her visit to his shed. "That was one of the things she taught me."

"Which makes that bracelet of yours a secondary focus, I suppose." He barely had time to nod before the doors slammed open. "Took you long enough, Albus!"

"My apologies, Irma. There was quite a crowd we had to wade through," the elderly headmaster called back. Dumbledore walked into the disaster area, Snape slinking behind him. Looking around, he turned his piercing gaze onto Harry. "I do hope this mess isn't your fault, Harry. You would still have detentions to serve when you returned from the summer holidays next year."

Pince leapt to his defense. "No, it wasn't the boy's fault. A rogue house-elf snuck into the castle and started attacking him."

"And just where is this elf?" Snape asked with a sneer. The woman shook her head. "Then how do we know that there even was one? Being attacked would certainly buy quite a bit of attention, especially considering last night's events, and I am sure the story would quickly change the attacker from a simple elf to some more threatening figure—"

"You think I did all this? Just to get _attention_?!" he demanded. His interactions with his Head of House, all in the Potions classroom, had never been warm or friendly, but neither was Snape as antagonistic there as he was being now. Then again, all those times Harry had been with the rest of the Slytherins and, more importantly, the Gryffindors, for whom Snape seemed to hold a special hatred. Here and now, with no witnesses? Maybe Snape was letting his real feelings shine through.

"Are you going to call me a liar, too?" retorted Pince, looking up at the tall man but still possessing an air of utmost condescension. "I heard the elf's voice, and no second-year is good enough to cast an auditory glamour. Furthermore, Harry has never given me any reason to believe that he is anything other than a curious student, especially not the sort of hooligan you are making him out to be."

Dumbledore smoothly stepped between the pair, his hand held in front of him in an effort to calm the situation. "I do not believe I have ever heard you speak so well of a student before, Irma," he said in a light tone. "His treatment of your books must be impeccable. If you say he was not involved, than he was not involved." Turning to Harry, the old man smiled. "Don't worry, Harry. We will get to the bottom of this and discover whose elf that was."

"If it helps, he said his name was Dobby," he said. He had no idea if there was a master list of who owned which elf – something that he hoped was not the case considering what it would mean if the wizards' society at large still found slavery acceptable – but even if there were not, they would still need Dobby's name to find him. "He didn't give me a last name, though, so I don't know how much that will narrow down the list. I don't know if Dobby is a common elf name or not."

Dumbledore smiled slightly and shook his head, but rather than explain just what he found so amusing, he beckoned Pince to follow and drifted out of the disaster zone. In doing so, he permitted Snape to storm up to Harry. "What were you doing here?" the bully snarled.

Harry's mouth flattened into a hard line. "I was studying," he answered eventually.

"Today is the Slytherin–Gryffindor game. All of your Housemates were in the stands. Why weren't you there instead of causing trouble here?"

"I don't enjoy Quidditch," shot back Harry. "It's not like we're required to attend them. I had better things to do."

"You are not required to go, but you are expected to support your House." Snape's sneer was full of loathing. "But no, Potters do what they want when they want. Rules and conventions are too plebeian for such exceptional people."

Unable to stand these baseless accusations any longer, Harry burst out, "What are you talking about? The school _rules_ say I can be in the library, and students are _expected_ to do well in their classes. Last year, there were a bunch of people here during Quidditch games—"

"Twenty points from Slytherin for talking back to a teacher," Snape interrupted, a nasty smirk on his face. "And detention after classes on Monday. Perhaps scrubbing out cauldrons will teach you to do what you're told when you're told."

Lash glared daggers at the wizard's back as he swooped away. "It has been some time since I last checked, but angels are permitted to execute self-absorbed, contemptible mortals like that one, yes?"

"No, Lash, I'm pretty sure that still counts as murder."

"Murder? No, I do believe ridding this world of a petty bully like this one would be classified as a public service." The Fallen huffed and turned away, her blue-green eyes still dark with hate, and the smile she gave him was cruel. "You will not serve detention with him. Enter his lab that night on schedule and grant me control, and I shall weave an illusion in his mind that will make him believe that he is supervising you cleaning those cauldrons when really it is he who will be doing the work."

Harry needed only a moment to nod in agreement with her plan. No one wanted to serve detention, and honestly, his momentary hesitation had nothing to do with avoiding Snape's undeserved vitriol and everything to do with wondering if it was a good idea to let Lash rummage around in the head of someone she despised and give her the chance to cause an 'accident'. Then again, if their experience with Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were anything to go on, he would be pulled into Snape's head should she try real psychomancy. If all she used was an illusion, there would be no problems; he had been the recipient of her illusions for the last three years, almost, and he was fine.

Well, he was fine as far as he could tell.

Looking underneath the demolished bookcases, he finally found his bag and his books. "What are we going to do if Dobby attacks us again?" he asked as he packed everything back up. "I think he's past the point of trying to get me to go back to Little Whinging."

"There are a variety of options for what we could do to punish his impudence. The real questions are how will we catch him and much time will we then have in which to do them." She shook her head. "Regardless, whatever sympathy his status might have earned from me has been erased. He will not enjoy what I will do to him should you catch him."

Harry shuddered faintly at the ex-angel's cold voice. "Then again," he said with forced brightness, "Maybe now that I've thoroughly brassed him off, he'll wash his hands of me and leave me alone. We can hope, right?"

"…And now it is practically ensured that he will cause some other disaster before this year is up."

* * *

_"Albus, we need you at the hospital wing immediately. There's been another attack. A student this time."_

Those were the words that had been rattling around in Albus's head ever since Minerva's Patronus had woken him from a dead sleep only ten minutes ago. He burst into the infirmary in something just short of a run, his night robes flapping around his knees. "What. Happened?"

"Mr. Anderson, one of my sixth-year prefects, found him lying on one of the landings when he was finishing his patrol," Minerva reported. "At first, we thought he had had an accident with the staircase above it, that he tumbled off when it was moving or something. I brought him here, and then…"

Poppy stepped up, her eyes flickering once or twice to the small boy lying on the white sheets before she focused all her attention on her report. "I can't do anything for him. Broken bones are simple; I can mend them in a heartbeat. Shattered bones are a little more difficult, but still something I can handle. We had enough of them in the first few years after we planted that damned Whomping Willow that I can probably give a seminar on how to properly care for those injuries. But Mr. Creevey?" She shook her head. "Every time I try anything, the fragments immediately separate again. These injuries aren't from trauma. He was cursed."

"Because injuries caused by Dark magic cannot be healed magically," he whispered sadly. Alastor was a walking,talking reminder of that fact. Taking a few steps closer, he gazed down at the small, pale boy who lay there unmoving. First-year Muggleborns should be having fun experiencing magic for the first time and making friends who would last them their entire lives. They should not be worrying that they would be attacked because of who their parents were, and they definitely should not look like they were lying at the foot of the Veil. "How bad are his injuries?"

"Bad enough that _'bad'_ doesn't even begin to cover it," Poppy scoffed. "Both humeri, shattered down their entire length. Radii, ulnae, carpals—"

"In English, Poppy. It's too early for me to translate."

"Fine. All the bones in his arms and his legs were shattered like glass," she bit out. "The same is true of his pelvis and four of his five lumbar vertebrae. That's more proof that this was deliberate, honestly; if he incurred all these injuries traumatically, he would have so much internal bleeding that he would have been dead before anyone found him."

Albus sighed and wiped his face with his hand. That was bad news, all right. "And his prognosis?"

"Poor." He turned a sharp expression on her, but the look on her face softened his own. She was not being curt because she did not care, something that would be extremely out of character for her; she was being so short because it obviously pained her to dwell on all this. "The fractures themselves will take months to heal. He'll need to have all the fragments positioned properly and then held there magically, and then once the bones themselves have more or less healed, the tendons and ligaments will need to be reattached. Then there's the physical therapy to undo all the atrophy that will have set in. Worse, with those vertebral fractures, there's a definite possibility that he sustained an injury to his spinal cord, and magic can't fix that." Poppy chewed on her lip for a moment. "Albus, he needs to go to St. Mungo's. These injuries are so far beyond the scope of my abilities that I don't even want to consider being the one taking care of him."

That was the statement he had been afraid he was going to hear. "I hoped to keep this situation quiet," he admitted to the two witches. "News that there is someone promising to purge the school of Muggleborns? That is the kind of scandal that I don't know that Hogwarts can survive getting out to the public. Not to—"

"You'd keep the students here and in danger just to avoid bad press?!" Poppy demanded. Next to her, Minerva appeared conflicted, but even she was looking at him in slight disbelief. "I love Hogwarts, too, but there's a time and a place to admit that a problem is too big for you to handle by yourself! This is about the children's safety!"

"Which is another reason I wanted to handle this internally," he replied sharply. "Right now, we know one thing for sure, and it is that this so-called Heir is inside the school. Considering the first victim was Argus's pet two weeks ago, it's most likely a student. Anyone fully trained in magic would not consider her to be enough of an obstacle to bother butchering her, even if he did want to leave a threat for all the school to see. Because it is a student and not an adult skulking around unseen, there is a major advantage to keeping the school open: we know exactly where the Heir is and how much room he has in which to hide. Furthermore, this is our territory, not his. Portraits keeping watch, house-elves wandering unseen and unheard. Eventually, we will catch him.

"If Hogwarts closes? Those advantages all disappear. If he is smart, he already has the names of many if not all the Muggleborns in this school, and from there he can track them down to the schools they will transfer into or even to their homes. He will have many, many more places to run and hide, and as a result, he will not need to be quite so cautious as he has been so far. Also, since I doubt this crusade of his was purely his own idea, once he leaves this place, he will again be in close contact with those who not only set him on this path but are likely more capable of inflicting harm and death on those they view as beneath them.

"That is why I want to keep this a secret as much as I can," he concluded. "Not because of reputation or ego, but because this is the best way to catch him. _'Keep your friends close and your enemies closer'_. I want to find this Heir and hand him over to the DMLE, but that will not happen if he scurries away and hides among the rest of the country."

Minerva and Poppy shared a long look before the latter sighed. "I… can probably get Mr. Creevey into St. Mungo's with a minimum of questions being asked about the circumstances. If need be, I could imply that he heard exaggerated rumors of how bad bullying can be at this school and so he tried to learn a curse that was far beyond his current skill. It will paint him in a negative light, but it should keep everyone's focus on him rather than here."

"And when he denies that story?" the Head of Gryffindor challenged.

"A story like this? Everyone would expect him to deny it. Unfortunately, I don't believe that he will be able to identify his attacker once he wakes up. The evidence points to him being cursed from behind, so he won't be able to help us catch the Heir."

He nodded. "I agree, that is unfortunate. Still, if that is the reality, there is little point in worrying about what might have been. Minerva, please show me where he was found. We need to talk to the portraits now if we hope to learn just what happened here, and maybe one of them was lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the Heir's face."

"I already asked the paintings. None of them saw anything," she said.

That was not a good sign. "What did the message say?"

"There wasn't a message. Not like there was with Mrs. Norris."

Albus frowned. The victims and the title that had been claimed pointed to Tom Riddle, to Voldemort, the same person he was convinced had been responsible for the original Heir of Slytherin attacks in 1941 and '42. Making this look like it might have been an accident… not so much. There had not been a message over every victim the first time around, but in each case, it was obvious that it had been deliberate. This was different, and when dealing with someone as deadly as Tom, different was bad.

Then again, this was not Tom himself. It was, as Albus had told the pair of witches, assuredly a student; perhaps he had been coached by Tom, which would explain how he knew whatever spell Tom had created to move unseen by the castle's portraits, or maybe he had learned of it from a relative's tales of that horrific year and decided to take the action demanded by the blood purists' bigotry. Either way, this imitator was probably a member of the families that had supported Tom's rise from the beginning. Someone like Theodore Nott, for instance, whose father and grandfather had both been Death Eaters and had appeared overjoyed at the fear the rest of the school felt when the cat's butchering had been discovered.

But suspicion was not enough. He needed proof.

"I still want to see it," he finally told Minerva. "We need a lead on his identity as soon as possible, and that is the best place to find one."

* * *

"Why do you want me to join the Dueling Club?" Harry demanded in a whisper while entering the Great Hall on Thursday. Ever since a first-year Gryffindor boy had been found crippled the previous Saturday night, the whole non-Slytherin student body had been walking on eggshells, so it came as no surprise that practically the entire school had packed themselves into the room to learn how to protect themselves from the Heir. "You're an excellent teacher, and it isn't like you can't give me lots of people to practice against."

Lash shook her head, the angel floating in the air in front of him and slipping through the people that stood in her way. "I can teach you how to fight with the kinds of magics used in my old world and how to take advantage of obvious combinations of spell effects that you have learned from books. Do certain spells synergize with each other in predictable but counterintuitive ways? Are there strategies for making the most out of simple spells? These are the kinds of things I have no way of knowing and therefore cannot teach you. If you have a teacher who knows how to fight with your style of magic, however…"

"Fine, fine. As long as it's not— Oh, come on! You have got to be kidding!"

Prancing onto the stage was none other than Lockhart, the ponce flapping about in ridiculous deep purple robes. And to make matters worse, who should be accompanying him but Snape? "Gather round, gather round!" Lockhart shouted. "Can everyone see me? Can you all hear me?"

"I stand corrected," groaned Lash. "You will learn nothing useful from this club."

"Good to know." Thankfully Harry was already near the edge of the crowd, so it was but the work of a moment to break free. With a muttered "_T'ak'un_", he faded from sight, and then he was out the door and making a break for his dorm.

He had better ways to spend his time than waste it listening to Lockhart's drivel.

* * *

**I have entirely too much fun coming up with spell incantations sometimes.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	27. The Beast of Slytherin

**I know this is late. I was on the road all week, and I finally got home this morning at 2:30 and immediately crashed.**

**Credit for this chapter's disclaimer goes to bissek (again).**

**Disclaimer:** Did the Hogwarts staff ever attempt to acquire either Mandrake Draught or mature Mandrakes so they could make the draught themselves from an outside source, instead of waiting eight months for the Mandrakes they had in the greenhouses to mature so that they could treat the petrified students?

* * *

**Chapter 27  
****The Beast of Slytherin**

The view outside Hogwarts showed a wintry wonderland on Friday morning, the only blemish the blanket of steely grey clouds that threatened to fully bury the castle underneath their burden this time. It made Harry exceedingly glad that Sprout had canceled class for the second-years that day; apparently, the mandrakes needed to wear scarves and socks to survive through the frigid Scotland winter, and she did not trust her students to complete that task. Whether that was because she thought them too inexperienced or the job too inherently dangerous considering the humanoid plants were now old enough for their screams to be lethal, he did not know.

Whichever was the case, he would not complain. With his first-period class canceled, it left him with an entire morning to do whatever he pleased. Right now, what he pleased was double-checking some of the facts he had read in his books about making a flying broomstick. The one he had enchanted over the summer had recently developed a shakiness when rising that he did not like, and he needed to know if they had made a bad assumption while working through the initial design.

He gave Pince a nod and a smile as he passed, and she returned the greeting with the barest upward twitch of her lips. She might not be the most demonstrative person on the faculty, but between her and Hagrid, Harry now had two staff members who definitely liked him. It made up for McGonagall and Snape, at least.

Some soft voices drifted over from the back of the room; for all the damage Dobby had done during his tantrum, the peace and order of the library had quickly been restored. Harry would have passed by entirely had he not heard his name spoken in a voice he recognized.

"Harry is _not_ the Heir."

"How sure are you about that, Hannah?" asked a voice that he thought belonged to Ernie Macmillan. Harry walked closer and peered through a gap in the books. Sure enough, a group of Hufflepuffs had assembled around one of the long tables. A stoutly built boy who was, in fact, Macmillan leaned forwards and stared intently at Hannah. "It isn't like anyone knows anything about him. He doesn't spend time with the other Snakes, but he doesn't go out of his way to make friends with anyone else, either. It's creepy, the way he's always on his own."

"Okay, he is a little creepy," agreed Justin Finch-Fletchley, "but there's a big difference between creepy and _'I'm going to kill all the Muggleborns'_."

"But it makes too much sense for him not to be the Heir. No one knows how he survived that attack by You-Know-Who, you know. I mean to say, he was only a baby when it happened. He should have been blasted into smithereens. Only a really powerful Dark wizard could have survived a curse like that." Macmillan dropped his voice until it was barely more than a whisper and said, "That's probably why You-Know-Who wanted to kill him in the first place. Didn't want another Dark Lord competing with him."

Hannah shook her head with a huff of disgust. "Come on, Ernie. That's ridiculous."

"Is it? My uncle's a historian, so I asked him about Potter's family. Do you know how many Potters were Sorted into Slytherin before him?" Hannah and Finch-Fletchley shook their heads. "None. Not a single person. That's too weird to be dismissed. And didn't you tell us last year that Potter was harassing Sally-Anne, Hannah? He probably thought she was too easy to pass up on."

"It wasn't like that!" protested the blonde. "It turned out that he just recognized her from their lives before Hogwarts and wanted to know if she was who he thought she was. That's all."

Macmillan shot her a triumphant smirk. "But if they already knew each other, shouldn't she have recognized him, too?"

Hannah's protests died in her throat as the majority of the Badgers nodded in agreement with Macmillan's lunacy. Harry, on the other hand, just rolled his eyes in disgust. It was, sadly enough, not the first time he had heard that particular accusation about him floated out, though it was the most detailed. Just as they had in the beginning of his first year, the rest of the school had defaulted to the assumption that just because he was Sorted into Slytherin, he was inherently and irredeemably evil. No one brought up that him promoting blood purity flew in the face of the fact that he himself was not 'pure' thanks to his mother, and a few had also used the isolation that had been forced upon him from the other students' own prejudices as 'proof' that he had been planning and plotting these attacks ever since he arrived at the castle.

The fact that he had been in the Great Hall when Mrs. Norris was discovered and so would not have had the opportunity to butcher her and pose the remains was likewise ignored.

If there was one comforting aspect of this entire debacle, it was that he was getting far more, if not sympathy, then at least tolerance from the Asian students. The news that the message posted next to the cat's body was in a Japanese poetic format had recently leaked out among the population at large, and they had almost predictably turned on their own friends and Housemates with all the speed of a startled cat. None of the irrationally suspected students had taken that attitude well; Cho Chang, a third-year Ravenclaw, had made the biggest scene when she stood up in the middle of lunch one day, slapped the boy sitting next to her across the face, and shouted at the top of her lungs, _'I'm from Hong Kong, damn it! Do you think we all look alike or something?!'_ before storming out.

Hannah launched into a defense for him, but Harry just shook his head and walked toward another alcove where he could get some work done in peace. It didn't matter what evidence she brought up or what arguments she made. Her Housemates' minds were already made up.

* * *

This couldn't be happening.

Harry sat numbly in his spot at the Slytherin table on Monday morning, his appetite having fled at the news circulating around the castle. There had been an attack the previous night. Another student had been found attacked in the halls, this time transfigured into a statue. She was supposedly posed to look like she was running away from something while looking over her shoulder at whatever was chasing her, and her expression was one of absolute terror. No matter what McGonagall had tried, she could not be changed back.

Sally-Anne had been turned to stone, and above her was a single, ominous warning: _The Chamber of Secrets has been opened_.

Across the room, he could see Susan and Hannah crying into their bowls of oatmeal, the rest of their House banded together around them. It was a greater show of solidarity than the Gryffindors had put on when one of their first-years had been hospitalized, and not for the first time, Harry wished he had been Sorted into Hufflepuff, as well. The Slytherins, by and large, were perfectly content with a Muggleborn being cursed like this.

Still, he decided as he stood and left the Hall with the few other students already heading out for their classes, he was now able to see the dark fortunes that came with being almost universally ignored and reviled. No one would care if he was absent the entire day. No one would care if he missed Lockhart's class that morning. Someone had attacked one of his friends, just like the Parisian vampires had attacked Aimée and Margaux, and just like before, he could feel a fire filling in his belly and his heart.

He was going to find out who attacked his friend, and he was going to see that person thrown in prison.

"Lash," he demanded as soon as there was no one in earshot, "do you know any spells that would let me see what happened in that hallway this morning?"

The angel appeared beside him, wearing a pair of military fatigues and boots below a black tee shirt. "Yes and no. There are psychometric and postcognitive spells in my old world, but just like with precognition, they do not work well. It takes a certain degree of talent to see outside of time, one that not everyone possesses, and these spells do little more than enhance that natural talent." He frowned, but she just smiled at him. "Thankfully, there are avenues that we may pursue other than my own skills. Since divination is taught as a course here, it is possible – likely, even – that such abilities are learned rather than innate in this world. And since Scarpin's Revelaspell has proven that you are capable of learning advanced spells out of a book…"

"To the library we go," he agreed with a smile.

Her own smile faded after a moment. "That said, you will need to be careful and keep your eyes open. The attack on Sally-Anne is proof that this Heir will not pass up an opportunity to attack, and with you now actively digging into his or her identity? You will be targeted."

"Why do you think she was out in the hallways at all?" he asked. "I mean, a prefect found her late last night, long after curfew was in effect. I wouldn't think she would wander around when there was someone threatening all the Muggleborns, not with how anxious she is."

"That we can lay at the feet of the medicines she is taking, I believe. Do you not remember what she said on the train?" she prompted when he looked up at her in confusion. "You told her she looked tired, and she revealed that her medication was causing her insomnia. She probably has been wandering the castle for months now just so she would have something different to look at than the walls of her common room."

"So because she was wandering around, she became a target of opportunity." Lash nodded. "And you think the Heir will specifically target me?"

"As someone with a uniquely detailed understanding of evil," the fallen angel answered, "I can tell you that if I were the Heir, I would kill anyone whom I felt was getting too close to uncovering my identity. Unusual circumstances may cause dead men to talk, but they still reveal less than the living. If you want to stop him, you will have to do it quickly. Do not sit on relevant information; as soon as you know something, act on it. In this case, that action is to tell Dumbledore so that he may call in law enforcement and then watch your back." She sighed. "I would tell you to inform the DMLE yourself, but for all that you are famous in this society, I do not know how much value they would give the attestations of a twelve-year-old boy. Better that they receive the information from someone in a position of authority."

So all he had to do was hope that the headmaster's attitudes regarding forwarding sensitive information was the same as Lash's. Find out who the Heir was, give Dumbledore that fact, and then keep himself safe between that and the DMLE arriving to arrest the Heir. That shouldn't be too hard.

* * *

It took Harry five hours to find and learn the spell he would need, but now he was ready. It was the middle of fourth period, everyone else was in class or the library or out on the grounds, and he had a solid forty minutes to get this to work. Enough time to do it all properly; not enough time to be lazy about it.

"Remember: a circle around the space where she was found, a triangle laying over it, and the three runes it insisted were necessary at the corners," Lash reminded him. They had discussed how important the runes were in this spell – almost a ritual, the ex-angel had told him, though how rituals were supposed to work in a world that was not connected to the Nevernever, she did not know – but they had eventually agreed that with how important this spell was in finding the Heir, they should probably perform it exactly the way the book said to do it rather than experimenting and wasting this opportunity.

Rolling his magnetic chalk in his fingers, he drew the shape large enough that it spanned the entire hallway and added the runes: thurisaz, ansuz, and perthro, the Elder Futhark runes for insight, communication, and secrets. The chalk went back into his pocket, his wand came out, and he commanded, "Show me the truth of the past."

He held some worries that this would not work, not when all the other incantations he had ever learned were in Armenian or Latin, but his doubts were unfounded. A half-sphere sparked into existence above the circle, the inside hazy and distorted like the world viewed through a soap bubble. After almost a minute, a crowd of students rushed from one end of the circle to the other, but what made their movements so interesting was that they were all running backwards.

Not that they had actually gone backwards in real life, of course. What this spell did was to treat time like a video tape. If time was the same as watching a movie, then it was entirely possible to 'rewind' the tape. In this case, he got to watch three more groups of students speed through on their way to – or maybe away from, all things considered – their classes, and then the hallway stood empty for another few minutes before things started getting interesting. Dumbledore walked back and forth through the space, waving his wand to and fro as though he could command secrets to reveal themselves, and then he, along with McGonagall and Pomfrey, carried Sally-Anne's statue into the space and set her at the edge of the circle. She was, Harry thought with a quiet swallow, far more life-like than the rumors had made her out to be; he half-expected her to suddenly start moving again and keep running. Following her was a blackened Fat Friar, who was moved all the way through the space and completely out of the circle. No one had mentioned that the Fat Friar had been affected by whatever this was, too!

It was lucky that he had picked this spot to examine rather than farther down the hallway. It was not necessary for him to cast this spell in the exact place where Sally-Anne had been cursed, not when he just needed to see her attacker's face, but it was good that he would be able to see part of the curse's effect. He did not want to accuse someone of being Sally-Anne's attacker when it turned out that person had just been on a midnight stroll. He didn't want revenge for the attack on his friend; he wanted _justice_, and that meant naming the true guilty party. If the Heir could curse ghosts, too, it was doubly important he get everything right because that was one more group of targets, and worse, one that had no idea they needed to be careful.

A prefect ran up to the statue before wandering off, and he settled in to wait. It should not be long now.

Another minute passed before activity was again visible inside the circle. A dark green thing appeared at the far end, and it slid backwards as it grew larger and larger. Dark green and scaled, Harry corrected himself in shock as the enormous body, taller than the dome, just kept moving and moving. Just when it finally began to taper, it bulged again to reveal the head of a gigantic snake, a crest of red spines barely visible on the top of its head above its bulbous, sickening yellow eyes.

"A basilisk?" Lash muttered to herself. "That explains the legends of Slytherin having a terrible monster. Basilisks are one of the most dangerous creatures in this world due to their incurably lethal venom and, more importantly, their ability to kill their prey with a single glance. It makes sense that he, supposedly capable of speaking to snakes, would choose a beast he could communicate with and that only he could control."

Harry was too busy to pay attention to his guardian angel. Walking backwards in front of the monster was the Heir of Slytherin, and her true identity was surprising. Red hair hung down to the shoulders of her slender frame, and the piping on her robes declared her to be a Gryffindor.

"I recognize her face," he whispered when she was out of sight again. A moment later, Sally-Anne's statue jerked as she hastily sprinted backwards. "But I can't think of her name. I didn't pay much attention to who was whom among the Gryffindors."

"Ginevra Weasley. First year Lion and the younger sister of the other Weasleys already at this school." Lash scowled and shook her head. "Except that makes little sense. I recall that much like the Weasley in your year, they have all expressed vehement and extreme condemnation of Slytherins, classifying them all as dark wizards. If they were truly Slytherin's descendants and blood purists, I doubt they would be quite so vocal on the subject. Something does not add up here."

Harry just shook his head and let the spell collapse. It didn't make sense to him, either, but he knew what his eyes saw. Unless it was someone disguising themselves as the littlest Weasley – and why would anyone chose a first-year rather than one of her brothers, anyway? – this was the Heir.

The mystery was solved, and all he needed to do was talk to the man in charge of this place.

* * *

Albus slowly blinked in astonishment and disbelief. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that for me? Miss Weasley is the Heir of Slytherin?"

Young Harry Potter nodded impatiently from his chair. "I saw it not half an hour ago. I used the Ima— Imajo—" He stopped and concentrated for a moment. "The _Imago Historiae Verae_ spell. It lets you mark out a circle and watch—"

"I am familiar with the workings of that spell," he interrupted, his hand upraised but a small smile on his face. Normally he loved listening to students expound on the things they had learned, even if it was something already known to him; there was truly no greater satisfaction as a teacher than watching the enthusiasm of the young as they discovered the joys of learning. Now, however, the dire nature of recent events meant he had no choice but to cut to the heart of the matter. "I must admit that I am surprised you were capable of casting it. Even upper-level students would have trouble with it."

The boy shrugged, clearly unaware of just how much power that spell required. And to go far enough back to watch the events of this morning? His father, for all James's talent with Transfiguration, had not been that powerful, and his mother… Well, Lily had always been secretive when he was around, so she might have kept her own strength hidden from him, though the reason why she would believe that necessary he honestly did not know. From pieces he had picked up during the War and occasionally in the years since, he could only assume that she held a slight grudge against him for not doing enough in her eyes to curtail the bullying of the blood purists on the Muggleborns while she was a student.

That, however, was neither here nor there.

"Unfortunately," he reluctantly told the young man, "that spell does have several limitations which you may or may not know. For instance, it only shows what an outside observer would have seen had he been there at the time. The spell might have showed Miss Weasley's face, but the Heir could have used a glamour or transfiguration to change his appearance. It would be sensible for him to throw off suspicion, and who better than someone whose family has never dallied with the Dark?"

"I suppose," the boy replied, "but if that were true, why would he choose to use her face rather than one of her brothers'? No one would believe a first-year would be cruel enough to butcher a cat and attack that other boy… Creevey, that's his name. For her to control a giant snake and use it to petrify Sally-Anne? Like I said, it's hard for even me to believe, and I saw her do it! If no one would disguise himself as her, than she has to be one who's actually guilty."

He steepled his fingers in front of him and looked over them at the Potters' son. "I have found that when something is unbelievable, it is a sign that either you do not have all the facts or your reasoning is based on bad assumptions. No," he said before the student could voice a retort, "I believe you saw what you say you saw. Someone who resembled Miss Weasley, whether it really was her or not, guided a basilisk through the hallways and was therefore responsible for the attacks on Miss Perks and the Fat Friar.

"We will have to move cautiously on this," he said to Harry's obvious displeasure. "We are discussing three different assault charges, one of which was on a spirit, which makes the legal ramifications… interesting. If even you, who saw it all happen, have trouble believing it, how can you expect anyone else to do so? Especially since there has long been an argument over whether the knowledge gleaned through the _Imago Historiae Verae_ should be considered witness testimony or hearsay, that latter of which is inadmissible in a court of law. There will need to be some kind of corroborating evidence."

"So you're just going to let her stay here?!"

Albus leveled a look at the boy, who promptly ceased his protests. Oh, he understood the young Slytherin's distress, especially considering the tone of voice that Miss Perks's name had been uttered in; this was personal to Harry, likely an attack on a friend. That said, there was a time to speak up and a time to listen, and this was the latter. "Did I ever say that I planned to let her stay where, if she truly is the Heir, she might cause further injury? No. With your testimony, I can honestly say that there is some evidence that she had a role in these attacks, and with that I can place her on suspicion and send her home for a time. If she is the Heir, the attacks will stop; if the Heir is instead someone else who was wearing her face, she will have been cleared of any suspicions of wrongdoing and will be allowed back, as is her right."

Harry still did not look mollified, and knowing the mindset of Slytherins as he did, he had a good idea why. "Do not fret," he told the boy. "Should Miss Weasley not be the Heir, you do not need to worry about facing any punishment. I do not think that you are merely using the current circumstances to play an ill-conceived prank or lash out at her or her family; as I have already said, I believe that you are telling the truth about what you saw. If anything, I am glad that you came forward. The Heir has been wily so far, and this is, embarrassing as it is to admit it, the best piece of evidence anyone has found so far as to his – or her – identity."

A moment passed, and finally the boy let out a long sigh and nodded in acceptance of the decision. He smiled back warmly even as his mind wandered to Minerva's condemning retelling of her shopping trip with Harry and his own concerns following the boy's Sorting. Perhaps he had been hasty in condemning the young man, especially on such flimsy proof. He trusted his deputy, but they were both Gryffindors and quick to jump to conclusions, which always caught up to them in the end. Had Minerva simply mistaken reticence for aloofness, stoic surprise for disgust? In that light, even Harry's borderline condemnation of the quirks of magical culture would be no different than those he himself had heard over the years from Muggleborns who assumed that the way they had always seen things done was the only right and proper way to do them and therefore saw wizarding society as a strange and alien place. Just because Harry had been taught magic before coming to Hogwarts did not mean that his still-unknown teacher had exposed him to their world at large.

He had not been there on that day, so he could not say how things really were, but it was hard to reconcile the almost Tom Riddle–like description of Harry's attitude then with the quiet but seemingly honest and trustworthy boy in front of him right now.

"If that is all, you should probably head back down and get ready for your next class," he said. "Again, thank you for bringing this to my attention. I promise you that if Miss Weasley is indeed the culprit, she will be punished to the fullest extent possible."

Harry stood and, after thanking him for making time to see him, left the room. Albus leaned back in his chair and prepared himself for the massive trial that now waited for him.

How to tell Molly that he was suspending her beloved daughter without risking being sent an eardrum-rupturing Howler.

* * *

A week after his conversation with Dumbledore, Harry hurriedly finished his toast and left the Great Hall, doing his best to ignore the glares of the other three Houses. Ginny Weasley's and her dorm mates' were the hottest, but the Gryffindors as a whole had decided that his 'baseless accusations' were the final pieces of proof they needed to know for certain that _he_ was really the Heir and had accused one of their own to throw the professors off his scent. The fact that he had somehow escaped punishment was all the justification they needed to get even on their own, and while he had managed to dodge the hexes fired at his back and avoid the nasty 'pranks' someone, likely her brothers Fred and George, had tried to slip him, he knew there was little chance that they would stop any time soon.

His eyes found the patch of red-stained stone laying just outside the Great Hall of their own accord, just as they had every morning since the latest attack. It had been a nasty surprise when one of the seventh-year Slytherins had been found staked to the floor, the boy somehow still alive even after being completely skinned, and the Slytherins had been quick to blame him for the attack that had injured one of their own. Personally, Harry thought the older boy had been attacked more because he was a known and outspoken opponent of blood purity, but no one cared about his opinion.

The message that everyone had seen before it could be washed away had been even more worrying than the attack on a Slytherin, if for no other reason than its structure.

_RUN ABOUT LIKE MICE,  
__ACCUSING ALL AND SUNDRY.  
__SNAKES SHOULD KNOW THEIR PLACE._

* * *

**Did anyone **_**not**_** see Sally-Anne's petrification coming? I tried to be pretty obvious about that one.**

**Apropos of nothing, my spellcheck hates the name 'Creevey'. Every time I type it in, my computer changes it to 'Creepy', which I should not find as funny as I do.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	28. The Mystery of the Heir

"**How did everyone know that Harry was the one to accuse Ginny?":** The Weasleys were able to put it together from things McGonagall let slip to the boys and things Dumbledore let slip to Molly and Ginny. Neither McGonagall nor Dumbledore _meant_ for his identity to come out, and neither realizes they were the source of the leak. They're both marveling at the seeming omniscience of the Hogwarts rumor mill.

**Yet another disclaimer by bissek.**

**Disclaimer:** Did nobody ever wonder why, if Harry really had a magical monster he could use against people he considered minor annoyances, he didn't send it after Malfoy or other people he considered genuine enemies? If not, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

* * *

**Chapter 28  
****The Mystery of the Heir**

Christmas dawned clear and cold, not that Harry really noticed. He had been finding it more and more difficult to crawl out of bed in the mornings when he knew he would have to fend off the accusing glares of everyone else in the castle, and he was more than happy right now to use the winter holidays to catch up on what he could only assume was poor sleep on his part from tossing and turning all night long. Nor did it matter when he got up; it wasn't like he had anyone waiting for him.

A strong arm wrapped itself around his belly while the fingers of another hand toyed with his hair, and he quickly became aware of his angel's body curled around his own. They laid there in mutual silence for several minutes before Lash sighed. "You know you cannot spend all day wallowing in bed."

"Why not?"

"Because it is not healthy. Because there is much you can do instead. Because I am worried about you." She said the last in a whisper, and he forced himself to roll over and look up at her expression of concern. Her hand slid down from his hair to cup his cheek. "This is why I wanted you to go to Toulon for Christmas. Even spending these two weeks in Little Whinging would have been better than staying here."

"I'm fine."

"You are a few _thousand_ years too young to think you can lie to me," she snapped. Her face softening, she pulled him into a tight embrace. "When I was a Fallen, I could have altered how you felt. Manipulated your emotions and your brain chemistry. What I would give to have that ability now so I could take away your pain. I am so, so sorry, Harry. I convinced you to return here for this year. That you feel like this is my fault."

"You're not responsible for any of this," he muttered into her nightshirt. "You didn't make them think I'm the Heir. You didn't make them assume I'm evil just because I have a goal to work towards. Even if I didn't have you, the Sorting Hat still would have picked up on that, and I still would have ended up here. The only difference is that I would be truly alone. Hannah and Susan only accepted me after my Sorting because Sally-Anne vouched for me, and we never would have met if you hadn't helped me figure out ghosting. I wouldn't know Aimée or Lisette or any of the other Veela. My relatives would still hate me. You've made things so much better than they could have been.

"No, you don't have anything to apologize for. It's _them_ who do." His face contorted in anger. A year and a half he had spent in this castle, and still he could count the number of people who were decent enough to try to get to know him before making assumptions about him on one hand with fingers left over. Sitting up, he could see Lash looking up at him mournfully, but he couldn't stop the words that came tumbling out. "Well, if they don't want me around, fine. They can all go hang for all I care! I'm not coming back here next year, Lash. I won't. I'll get Aunt Petunia to sign me up for some normal school and learn magic from books with you. I don't need this place, and I don't need these people."

"While I cannot refute your conclusions about your fellow students at this school," Lash replied delicately, "you need to be careful not to allow that mindset poison your chance for relationships in the future. Eternal isolation is not something to be desired."

"I don't _desire_ it. I just don't have much of a choice. The staff and students. All the random people who sent me that hate mail last year. The people in Privet Drive who all believed I was this juvenile delinquent." He scoffed. "I have better relationships with Veela and dwarves and a _fallen angel_ than I do with other humans."

"Thank you, Harry. That was the most backhanded compliment I have ever received," she commented in a voice drier than a desert. "Assuming it even was a compliment in the first place."

"You know what I mean."

"I do. I also know it is not nearly so bad as you claim. Hannah and Susan did not disown you, and Finch-Fletchley expressed his doubts that you are at fault. Once Sally-Anne is healed, that will be yet another. The other students who were baselessly accused of being the Heir have, while not come to your defense, at least ignored you."

Thinking about her rebuttal, he muttered, "Maybe."

"You know I am right." Rolling out of his bed, the blonde shook out her hair. "Now, come along. It is almost noon, and you barely picked at your food last night. Go to the Great Hall and eat something."

* * *

Sitting on the couch in the common room, Harry stared suspiciously at the purple-and-orange-wrapped box in front of him. When he returned from lunch, he saw that he had completely missed the single present waiting for him next to his trunk. Lash, after confessing that she had noticed it, also said that she thought getting him showered and fed was more important, and he had to admit that he did feel slightly better now.

Looking at the tag on the gift did not help him, either, since neither he nor Lash recognized the handwriting of the simple well-wishes, and it had been left unsigned.

"I highly doubt it is going to lunge out and bite you," the angel prodded. "Just open it and find out what is inside it."

He shrugged and ripped away the paper, and then he looked at the cardboard box filled with pure white quills in surprise. "Sugar Quills? A magical sweet, I guess?"

"Yes. Some of the older years have mentioned them once or twice." She settled herself on the couch next to him and pulled him into a loose embrace. "Now I really wonder who sent these to you. They are not expensive or special, but most people would include their name when leaving a gift."

"Unless it's a trick." Opening the box and slipping one of the quills out, he waved his wand over it and muttered the incantation for Scarpin's Revelaspell. To surprise, the only ingredient revealed was sugar. "Or maybe it's not. Maybe it's an ordinary, unremarkable sweet."

How sad was it that this was actually the more surprising result?

A snicker broke the silence. "My little boy is becoming a man," Lash taunted with an affected sniff. "Already attracting secret admirers and everything."

Harry opened his mouth to shoot back when the door to the common room opened. For all that the other Slytherins ignored him, they would still notice if they saw him talking to the voice in his head. Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle stomped into the room, and as soon as their gazes landed on him, they started moving toward him.

That was when their appearances warped and faded. Behind ghostly illusions of the three second-years stood instead a trio of Weasleys, the twins as well as Ronald, the one who shared classes with him. Harry's left eye twitched in irritation. Were they really going to slip into the Slytherin common room just to take their aggravations out on him?

"Potter!" the twin disguised as Malfoy said, pulling a nearby chair closer. His brothers quickly joined him. "What are you doing here all on your own?"

"They may have spent time learning the password to the door, but they did not learn enough to know your relationship with the other Slytherins," Lash pointed out.

No, they hadn't, Harry thought with a mental smile. The Weasleys believed that he was 'just another Slytherin', that all the Snakes were exactly alike. Should he go ahead and take this opportunity to break them of that misconception?

"If you are thinking what I think you are thinking, do it. It might just change their attitudes toward you. And even if it does not, I need some entertainment."

"Ha. Ha. Very funny, Malfoy. I'm dying of laughter here." He leaned back into the cushions, opening a nearby book to a random page and turning his face toward it while at the same time watching the Weasleys out the corner of his eye. "It's almost like you've never taunted me about that before."

The three redheads looked at each other in confusion. Ronald-as-Crabbe opened his mouth to say something, but he clamped it shut again when Goyle-twin shook his head.

"I've just been thinking," Malfoy-twin denied. "We may not like each other, but with one of our own being attacked, maybe we should all put this aside and stick together until it's over."

"Maybe I'd believe you if you hadn't declared quite loudly just last week that he got what he deserved for being a _'blood-traitor and a Muggle-lover'_. Don't you remember saying that all you _'true Slytherins'_ have nothing to fear?"

"Then you think you're perfectly safe, don't you?" Ronald prompted with a scowl.

Harry turned to glare at him. "Don't lump me in with you. _I_, at least, am a decent person and not a bigot. I don't judge people's character and worth based on how pure their blood is or what House they were Sorted into." That last bit was directed more at the Weasleys than the people they had disguised themselves as, and he nodded in satisfaction when their expressions revealed that the barb had hit home. Maybe it would teach them not to make blind assumptions like they had with him.

Or maybe not. The youngest of the brothers spat back, "And that's why you accused Ginny of being the Heir? Because you don't judge people?"

The twins shot panicked glares at Ronald, apparently realizing that neither Crabbe nor any real Slytherin would speak of their sister with such familiarity. Considering this was the best chance he had to get his story out, Harry let it pass without comment. "I'll tell you the same thing I told Dumbledore. I saw someone who looked like Weasley sneaking around the corridor where Sally-Anne was found. If it wasn't her, it was someone who disguised himself to look like her. He felt the evidence was enough to suspend her until he was sure one way or another." He let out a sigh. "Apparently, it really _wasn't_ her, but I still say I did the right thing by letting him know as soon as possible."

Goyle-twin stared at him thoughtfully for a moment before meeting Malfoy-twin's eye and giving a small nod. In a far less suspicious voice than he had used before, Malfoy-twin asked, "Who do you think the Heir is now?"

"I don't have a clue," he grumbled. "With all the praise he's getting in here, I would have thought he would have announced who he is, at least among the Slytherins. But he's keeping quiet, or maybe he convinced the Sorting Hat to put him in a different House. I just don't know.

"But I'm going to keep an eye out for him." Pinning Malfoy-twin with a glare, he said, "Nobody hurts one of my friends and gets away with it. _Nobody_. And if I find him, I'm going to make sure he's locked up in prison forever, him and anybody who tries to help him. You'll keep your mouth shut and your hands to yourself if you know what's good for you."

If the Gryffindors ever got the bright idea to strike out at him by going through the girls, he would make them regret it.

Malfoy-twin actually smiled at that threat. "Duly noted. I think we'll just go, then," he said, standing and motioning the others to join him. "There might be more treacle tarts in the kitchens."

"The kitchens?" Harry asked with a sharp smile. After the Weasleys had snuck into the Slytherin common room to interrogate him, not to mention the fact that they had spread the rumor through the school that he was really the Heir, he deserved the chance to mess with them just a little. "Changed your tune, haven't you? You said just yesterday that your father told you they weren't accessible to students."

The twin stuttered out some response; Harry was not listening that closely. He was too busy keeping himself from laughing, which was made all the harder with Lash chuckling next to him. "Do you think they got the message?" he asked once the brothers fled the common room.

"Oh, I am sure that they heard you. They might even believe you. It is everyone else they must convince." His good mood fell, and she quickly added, "Then again, since they likely were some of the louder voices calling for your head, convincing them that you had nothing to do with it can only be to your advantage."

"Maybe. But even if they do, what's to stop the rest of the school from blaming me for the next thing that goes wrong?" he countered.

She nodded in sad agreement. "Nothing. Your decision to leave Hogwarts is a good one. That said, there is no reason not to maintain a friendship with the people with whom you are on good terms here." Prodding the box of Sugar Quills with a black-painted toe, she teased, "Including your little admirer. I truly am curious just who she is."

"How do you even know it's a she and that she fancies me?"

"The handwriting is neater than the norm for males, and girls are often interested in romance at an earlier age than boys." The angel tousled his hair. "It is a minor mystery, but perhaps one you should focus on now rather than beat your head against the wall of the Heir's identity. Until we have more information, there is nothing that can be done. Just keep your eyes open and your wits sharp."

* * *

"We have more information," said Harry four weeks later, "and I have even less clue what's going on than we did before all this."

Over the previous two weeks, the Heir had stepped up his game and attacked eight people. That was where everything went weird. There had been two 'messy' attacks, one where a fourth-year had been found – at least according to rumor – with his liver and one kidney removed, and the other a first-year Ravenclaw girl who had been grievously burned over her entire body; both had been transferred to St. Mungo's Magical Hospital, and ominous haiku had been found nearby. Another person had been petrified, this time with a simpler message warning that the death of all Muggleborns was imminent. Two people had been found in the Entrance Hall beaten and crippled. And three people had been only mildly injured beyond the fact that they had _'Mudblood'_ branded into their chests, but they also could not recall anything that had happened over the previous year and believed it to still be early 1992.

"It is strange," Lash agreed from her spot on his bed next to him. In front of them floated the messages that had been left at certain scenes and his memories of the scenes themselves if he had the chance to look at them. "Every time he strikes, he uses a different methodology from the time before. Before, it was several weeks between each attack, but then it suddenly changed to all at once." The three types of messages drifted to the front and sorted themselves into groups. "This is the part that is the most interesting. You can see that while the first messages were in different handwritings, he has decided to abandon that pretense now. That is actually a relief in some ways; I was initially worried that there was not only the Heir running around, but also a copycat. Still, even when using his own hand, he has kept to the same pattern. The most gruesome attacks are contrasted by the poetry, the petrifications go with blunter messages, the amnesiacs are branded, and the beatings have nothing.

"I know there is a pattern here, a reason that he uses these four routines, and if we understood that pattern, his identity would be revealed. I just cannot for the life of me figure out what it is," she concluded in a mutter.

"Why would he do all this in different ways in the first place?" Harry wondered.

"Fear. If he used the same methodology every time, it would become expected. Even varying the timing as he has done would not change that as time went on, the attacks would lose some of their impact on the student body as a whole. You would all become desensitized." She flicked her fingers and scattered the messages back into the mixture of images. "On the other hand, if every time he attacks, he does so in a different way, there is a measure of uncertainty that is added. Last time, he branded and cast the Memory Charm; what will he do next? Another petrification? A mutilation? A beating? That uncertainty makes the fear all the more potent because it is yet another question that is added to those already floating around.

"And fear is the real motivation for his actions." The scenes rearranged themselves in chronological order. "For all the proclamations that he will kill the Muggleborns, there has not been a single fatality. The Memory Charm victims lost one year of time; terrifying, yes, but nowhere near as bad as wiping out their entire lifetimes. Sally-Anne and the other petrification victims can be cured with a potion, albeit apparently a complicated one. The students who were beaten will recover given time. Even the haiku attacks, for all the injuries inflicted on their victims, were methodical enough that there was only ever the _illusion_ of danger."

He looked at the images with renewed interest following that explanation. "So what's the point? If he isn't going to kill anyone, why threaten to do it?"

"Consider the attitudes of the blood purists. They truly believe that the Muggleborns are a threat to their way of life, but for all their bluster, few of the Slytherins have done anything more than bully their compatriots. Some of that is undoubtedly that they know their victims' friends would retaliate against any serious actions, but some of it might also be that they do not have the callousness or the self-discipline to see their own beliefs through. Instead, this person decided to use fear as his weapon. He does not have the stomach for actually killing anyone, but if he can make the Muggleborns so afraid for their safety that they leave and never return? From the standpoint of 'purifying the school', there is no functional difference."

"Why all the attacks so close together, then?"

"If I had to speculate, I would say it is because all the people he is trying to scare away came back from the winter holidays. Since his previous attacks were not sufficient for his purposes, he is trying to scare them enough that come Easter, they leave and not return."

Shaking his head, Harry pointed out, "The Easter break isn't until April, though. That's three months away. Shouldn't he have waited until March or early April?"

"Now you are starting to think the way monsters do," the former Fallen praised. "I expect he will set off another round of attacks at that time. Part of the reason so many Muggleborns returned this time is probably that they did not have anywhere else to go. By attacking now, he gives them the impetus to write home to their parents and have them look for a new school to attend, or even to prepare the paperwork to withdraw entirely. Once they have a choice, he expects they will leave for safer locals."

"And then he will target the Halfbloods like me."

"Possibly. Possibly not. I do not know his motivations as well as I need to give you a definitive answer." She looked at him seriously. "All the more reason to leave here as soon as possible. If there is a Muggleborn exodus in April, it would be safest for you to join them. Martyrs may have their deeds praised and remembered, but they do not live to enjoy the benefits. Do not aspire to be one of them."

* * *

**I apologize for the short and rough chapter, but it fought me every step of the way. And on that note, it's been getting harder and harder to scrounge up the motivation to write this story in general. I don't know if that's because I need a longer break from writing it, because I need to work on something else as a palette cleanser of sorts, or because I've just written myself into a corner, but regardless, it's an issue.**

**So here's the plan. I'm going to finish year 2, have no fears about that; there are only two or three chapters left, anyway, if I do a lot more 'telling' of the canon or semi-canon scenes than I have been. Once that's done, I'm going to mark this part of the story complete and go on a – hopefully brief – hiatus. When I get my inspiration back, I will start a new file, which will be imaginatively named Deal with a Devil, Part 2, and drop a note at the end of this story so you'll know to look for it.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	29. The Tome

**Last chapter ended in January; this one starts in April. Don't worry, you did not miss an entire chapter.**

**Disclaimer:** When Fudge 'needed to be seen doing something' about the Chamber of Secrets, did his actions in any way involve the Ministry department dedicated to dealing with dangerous magical creatures? If not, I own neither the Harry Potter nor Dresden Files franchises; they belong to J.K. Rowling and Jim Butcher, respectively, among others.

**At this point, I'm seriously considering deputizing bissek as my official disclaimer writer, when I get back to this story if not for my others.**

* * *

**Chapter 29  
****The Tome**

Harry flattened himself against a nearby wall. His veil was good at hiding him from sight and sound, but he had no clue whether the troll strolling down the hallway relied on those senses or smell to find threats.

Everyone had been on edge for the last three months, which was the reason why the trolls were there to begin with. The Board of Governors supposedly had found out only just then that the attacks inside Hogwarts were happening at all, and they took prompt and probably hasty action. Dumbledore was suspended from the post of headmaster pending an official investigation and possibly dismissal depending on what the investigation turned up, and Hagrid had been hauled away not a day later. According to the accusations the DMLE workers had recited in the middle of the Great Hall before they took him in, he had been the one blamed for unleashing Slytherin's basilisk when the Heir first attacked in the early forties. Harry did not believe that for a minute – Hagrid had been a Hogwarts employee for the intervening decades without a single incident like this occurring in all that time, and why would the gigantic man disguise himself as a first-year girl to do it? – but he had no physical evidence with which to prove his position, nor did he know exactly what had been discovered after the first incident.

In order to stop the attacks, the Board had also approved the hiring of 'security trolls', the very creatures Harry wanted to avoid, as an additional line of defense. It seemed to be working, too; over the last twelve weeks, there had not been even a hint of the Heir moving against the Muggleborns. Tensions had been ratcheting up since the spree of assaults and the arrival of the hulking, violent humanoids, but now they were finally starting to settle as the sight of trolls patrolling the hallways became routine and safety returned to the castle. Some people were even halfway taunting the Heir; the Weasley twins, in particular, had taken to loudly lamenting that they had to do their homework assignments because the Heir had not yet struck them down.

Considering they were Purebloods and therefore not likely on the Heir's list, anyway, it truly was a baseless taunt, but it lifted the spirits of the school in general.

He was not so confident, however, and even if the Heir never lifted another finger, he still wanted out of this school. His resolve to leave this society for the normal world had not changed one iota since the winter holidays. Thankfully, there was someone he could talk to about this: Hermione Granger, a former Gryffindor who had dropped out of Hogwarts during the Christmas holidays of the previous year. He didn't know if she was attending a different magic school or had resumed regular schooling, but it could not hurt to ask her. Now that she was no longer surrounded by Lions who would reject him out of hand purely because of the piping on his robes, perhaps she would be willing to actually talk to him.

Contacting her was the hard part. He had sent a couple of letters to her, but each time the owl had returned to him with its burden untouched. He doubted it was because she did not want to talk to him specifically as she had not seen enough of his handwriting to recognize it, but it might instead be because she wanted nothing to do with magic at all any longer. If he showed up unannounced at her doorstep, he would have a chance to plead his case and get her on his side. Dropping by, however, required he first find the address for her house, and he did not know where in Britain she lived.

The security troll trundled past him without even looking his way, and he held his breath so as not to gag on the stench coming from the beast. That answered that question, at least; they most certainly did not track by scent. Now in the clear, he hurried down the hall and around the corner. A wireframe diagram in the corner of his left eye turned with him, the red line growing shorter as he followed the route to his destination.

He had looked up tracking spells in the library while making his plans, but he hit a wall there. For all that wand magic was generally different from the evocation Lash had taught him, the higher level tracking spells were almost indistinguishable from thaumaturgy and likewise needed objects that belonged to the person he was searching for. Objects that he did not have. The lower level spells did not have that requirement, but they also only pointed in the direction of the person or place in question, which barely narrowed down his search at all.

"Here it is," Lash said when the approached the end of the path. "It should be… yes, behind the portrait of a fruit bowl."

"We don't know the password," he reminded her. That was not going to stop them; he had spent too much time wandering around the castle and casting a spell to point him at the school's lost and found so his angel could triangulate it for them to be stymied by a hidden door. If he was going to have to break the door down, he would like to know they were in the right place. "Are you sure the model of the school is accurate?"

"Assuming space is not warped inside the castle, yes, I am. Cede me control for a moment." His hand moved of its own accord, his fingers sliding over the canvas. "It is much like the hidden door in the Parisian catacombs," she said with his mouth. "All I have to do is find the knot, and from there give it a _twist_…"

The pear shook and protruded outwards, molding itself into a large doorknob.

"…and the way is open."

As soon as she returned ownership of his body to him, he grabbed the knob with both hands and turned.

This was not the lost and found, he decided after a single glance at the cavernous room, not unless the kitchens had lost most of their pots and pans over the years. For all its size, the room felt cramped; four long tables filled the room, a fifth at the far end, and in between scurried at least a hundred tiny figures, all with long ears and noses and big, bulbous eyes. House-elves, just like Dobby, except hopefully these weren't going to try to kill him.

He let the veil unravel, and one of the elves noticed him and immediately ran over. "Can wes help you, young master?" it said in a voice that was far too chipper for this late hour.

"I hope so," he answered after a brief hesitation. "I was looking for the lost and found, but apparently I got some bad directions. Could you…." He trailed off when the elf shook its head, its ears flapping noisily.

"This being the lost and found, young sir. Wes be getting it for you. What's being lost?"

"It's not mine, exactly. It belongs to a friend of mine. Hermione Granger? She was a student here last year, a first-year, and she dropped out. She thinks she might have left some of her belongings here and really wants them back."

The elf thankfully bought his story, for it nodded and waved him to a small table with four chairs set in a corner. "Bippy be looking for her things. Anything she sure is being lost?"

What would give him the best thaumaturgic link, he wondered. "She really didn't say. I think clothes or a notebook or something, but I'm sure she'd appreciate anything you can find."

The elf nodded and vanished with a loud pop, and he settled in to wait for its return. "This truly was a good idea," the former Fallen praised. "Checking for something Granger left in the lost and found would not have been my first solution to try, but it certainly seems to be paying dividends."

Several minutes passed before the elf returned. "Bippy is sorry, but Bippy not be finding any clothes. Bippy is finding young miss's notebook, though."

"That's good enough," he said, taking the red spiral-bound notebook from the elf's hands. "I'm sure she'll be happy to have it back."

"'Tis after curfew now," the elf said, wagging a finger at him. "Young master should be in bed. Young master will wait to send young miss her notebook in the morning, yes?"

Lash snickered, and he stared at the creature for a moment. Was he being told off by a house-elf? "Yes, I'll send it to her tomorrow," he agreed, and that seemed to be the right answer if the elf's smile was any indication.

"Bippy is glad. Good night, young master."

"You have a week until the Easter holidays," Lash reminded him. "I will go through the spells again tonight, and you can start on them tomorrow. Hopefully one of them, or all of them combined, will give you enough information that you may teleport there once the break begins."

* * *

It was only noon on the Monday of the Easter break when Harry teleported into a well-tended suburb of Chelsea. He had checked just a few minutes ago to be sure that Granger had her holidays this week as well, and then it was just a quick trip on his broom back to the train station so he could use his ghosting ring. Knocking on the front door, he leaned back on his heels and waited. He had no clue what he was going to say, but he could imagine how she would probably react to his showing up announced. Most of those he could run with.

Several seconds later, she opened the door enough for him to make out her face and asked, "Can I help you?"

Suspicion he was expecting. Anger, the same. Fear would have been unwelcome but something he was prepared for. Bland curiosity? Not so much. "Are you Hermione Granger?" he asked, wondering if she had a sister he hadn't seen during his tracking periods. That was about the only explanation he could think of for her not recognizing him.

"That's me," she replied cautiously. "Do I know you?"

"Tell her no and show her the book," Lash urgently whispered in his ear.

"No, you don't." Thankful that he had brought the notebook with him, he raised it up so she could see it. "I found your notebook and thought you'd like it back."

"Oh, thank you!" She reached out and took it, then flipped open the front cover where her name was written. "How did you find my house, though? The phonebook?"

"Yes."

"How long have you been looking?" she wondered aloud. "There are fifteen Grangers living around here, and we're the last on the list."

That was a very good question. "This was the closest house?" This conversation was already going off the rails, and he had not even had a chance to ask the questions he had for her.

"Take a look at her hands."

Now that he was paying attention, he saw what had Lash so interested. He had not been close to Granger, not when they were in opposing Houses, but he had seen her in class. He thought he would have noticed if the girl had previously had a ring of scars around each wrist. "If you don't mind me asking, what happened to your hands?"

"What? Oh, these." She waved one hand negligently as if they were old news. "I fell into a rosebush when I was very little. The thorns shredded my wrists. Nothing too deep, but they still scarred. The plastic surgeons said they didn't want to try anything until I'm at least sixteen so there will be a smaller chance of complications from the repair. Thank you again for bringing this back."

"You're—" The door slammed shut. "—welcome?"

Lash was waiting for him at the bottom of the small flight of stairs leading up to the door. "I do not like this, Harry. I do not like this at all."

"I think I know what you mean. Something doesn't make sense about this. I know she didn't have those scars before, so where did she get them, and why didn't she recognize me?"

"I expect those answers are one and the same." He looked at her curiously. "Those scars? They look like Ogham characters." At his continued uncomprehending expression, she elaborated, "Ogham is an ancient script used by the Celts. In my world, some wizards used it as their primary runic language."

Now the pieces fell into place, and he understood why Lash did not like the picture they made. "What kinds of spells would need to be carved into somebody's skin?"

"There are any number of answers, but those I am thinking of at the moment? There are spells that can prevent a witch from casting magic, though it was not used often because there were artifacts that could do the same faster and easier. I suspect that there might also be a runic expression that would prevent owls from finding her."

He walked down the street, more to get off Granger's doorstep than any other reason. "She can't cast magic. Owls can't find her. And if she doesn't remember me, it's possible that she doesn't remember her time at Hogwarts, either. That about right?"

"That is an unfortunately likely supposition. She dropped out of school, or her parents pulled her out, so the Obliviators who erased Dean's memories paid her a visit as well. She wished to leave that society, and they made sure she could never return nor reveal their existence. The law concerning the use of magic in front of normal people taken to its logical extreme."

"And I bet that what's waiting for me if I try to go through with leaving Hogwarts," he muttered with increasing anger. "Unless you can protect my mind if they try it?"

She shrugged helplessly. "If I had my full powers? Possibly, even probably. But as I am? I do not know if I could defend you or not."

"So I'm stuck in Hogwarts unless I want to give gambling with my memories a go. Great."

Lash pointedly looked away from him. "…Not necessarily. There might be a loophole in the law or some other way to get around this restriction. There are too many unknowns for me to say anything definitive. Regardless, I would not say our plans to pull you out of Hogwarts are _ruined_. They just need additional steps. Unfortunately, one of those steps is to make sure no one knows you are planning to run away until you are gone."

"…I have to pick out electives for next year, don't I?" She nodded, and he covered his face with his hand. He had received a form two weeks before stating that he had to take at least two electives and that if he did not submit his list by the end of this week, they would be assigned to him. With only five classes to choose from, that threat did not hold much weight, but there was still the chance that he could be assigned to Muggle Studies – pointless considering he knew the Muggle world just fine from living in it – or Ancient Runes even though he had a runic language that worked perfectly well already. At least that was two choices out of the running. "What class did the Indiana Jones job need? It wasn't Runes, but…."

"Arithmancy, the study of magic via mathematical analysis."

"That's right. And what else?" Thinking back over the year, he couldn't help but remember the afternoons he had spent in the thestral paddock. "Care of Magical Creatures."

"You will enjoy those classes, I think." She raised one eyebrow. "You are keeping your prospects for Curse-Breaking as a contingency plan, I take it? Good," she continued when he nodded. "It is always to your advantage to have multiple options, even if your preferred plan succeeds. If all else fails, I think you could regain your enthusiasm for magical archeology."

He gave her a shrug. She was likely right; he probably could get excited about being a Curse-Breaker. Just not right now. Right now, he wanted a break from the whole of the magical world.

"We have much of the day left if you wish to visit Toulon," she said with an air of studious disinterest. Even so, he grinned; it would be nice to see the Veela again. "Ah? Is that a smile I see? I wondered where you had misplaced it."

"Oh, hush. I just haven't had much to smile about lately." Twisting the ring around his thumb, he thought of France. "_Darbas_."

* * *

The vista of space surrounded her, and Lash let herself float formlessly in the void for a moment. This was nice, relaxing. She would love to stay here for a few hours and pretend that the real world did not exist.

"But all good things must come to an end," she grumbled.

With a thought, images of the Heir attacks appeared around her, the web arranged chronologically but also with the different styles of attack grouped together. Nothing had made sense about those attacks, but at least there was some pattern visible. That was no longer the case.

More images joined the timeline. After four months of silence, the Heir had struck again, but this time, things were different. Four student, one from each House and all in their third to fifth years, had gone missing in the span of a day. The next morning, the first of them showed up. A fourth-year Hufflepuff, but this one was, remarkably, a Halfblood. Her body was covered in gashes, and above her was yet another haiku written in her own blood.

_IN THE BEGINNING,  
THE FOUNDERS EXISTED IN  
PEACEFUL HARMONY._

On Tuesday, none other than George Weasley had reappeared. He was unconscious but visually unharmed beyond having 'Blood Traitor' branded into his chest. A year of memory had been erased, as expected, and his twin brother had been all but inconsolable. The strange thing was that he also sat under a haiku, and this one did not stand alone as all the others had been but instead continued on where the first one stopped.

_THEN STRIFE ENTERED IN.  
MUDBLOODS, COME TO ROB US BLIND,  
TO STEAL OUR MAGIC._

Everyone was on edge that night, and despite increased patrols, the Heir managed to slip past the portraits and the staff and the security trolls yet again. A fifth-year Slytherin this time, one who, much like the seventh-year who was flensed immediately following Harry accusing Ginevra Weasley of being the Heir, had been a critic of the Heir's attacks. He had been beaten badly, the bones in his arms and legs shattered in multiple places. The third verse of the poem was revealed then.

_THEIR DASTARDLY PLAN  
ONLY SLYTHERIN COULD SEE.  
HE TRIED TO WARN US._

Plans had been made to evacuate the castle after that, but the wheels of bureaucracy were slow to turn. An actual corpse hanging from the rafters in the Great Hall provided the grease, and even the blood purists were left unnerved by the simple fact that the victim was another Pureblood.

_FRIEND TURNED AGAINST FRIEND.  
SLYTHERIN WAS BETRAYED. NOW,  
HIS GRUDGE IS FULFILLED!_

"I do not like this," she said to no one. "I do not like this at all. Why break the pattern? If he wanted to tell the Slytherins' version of the Founders' conflict, why not write it all with Monday's victim? And why widen his pool of targets? Is this a sign that he is panicking, lashing out at the first available target? Or is he coming to enjoy his role in this tragedy?"

Just as she was concerned about the Heir's actions, so too did she worry about the response. Hogwarts had been officially closed following the latest victim; the students were told that they needed to pack up their things and be ready to board the Hogwarts Express the following morning. That by itself was the most appropriate course of action, but the Heir should have expected this. If his goal was to force everyone to abandon the castle, then there should not be a problem, but what if that was not it? Or worse, what if he wanted everyone to be gathered together in one place so he did not have to search out his next victim.

What was his goal, an empty castle or a graveyard? Everything depended on that.

They were out of time. Lash let the illusion fade, returning to the real world and looking down at her sleeping host. She had failed to discern the Heir's identity, but she would not fail to keep Harry safe. If he and she stayed alert, if they kept their eyes open until after the arrived safely at King's Cross, they would be fine, and then they could worry about the next step.

They just had to hold out until then.

* * *

Robes, ordinary clothes, parchment, quills, ink, and potions supplies in his trunk? Check.

Trunk shrunk to the size of a matchbook and safely tucked away in his zippered pouch? Check.

Ghosting ring, sight anklet, and shield bracelet on his person? Check.

Thorn and wizarding wands in his pocket? Check.

Hazel stylus and flying broomstick also in his pouch? Check.

Wards defending his room collapsed and all the runes erased? Check.

Harry nodded to himself and surveyed his empty dorm. That should be everything. "Get to the Great Hall. Get to the Express. Get to London. Do all of that without getting killed. That the plan?"

"It is," Lash answered, the angel suddenly sitting on his bed. "Hannah and Susan should be there as well, and Sally-Anne and the other petrified student were scheduled to be transferred to St. Mungo's yesterday. That is everything and everyone of importance to you ready to leave."

"No reason for me to stick around, then."

The common room was totally deserted, not that that was surprising. The other Slytherins had made it clear that they were going to let the house-elves gather their belongings for them, so they were long gone by the time he finished his own packing. Harry personally preferred that, should he need to run, he had all his things on him already and would not have to wait for them to be delivered. The door leading to the dungeons creaked open as he made his way out, an ominous sign if there ever was one.

They had walked down the corridor and were nearly to the staircase that led to the rest of the school when Lash narrowed her eyes. "Harry."

"I hear him," he whispered. "Twenty feet or so behind me. He's been following me since halfway up the hall."

She shook her head. "I know you knew about him. I am more concerned about the individual laying in wait for you up ahead."

Two of them? He stopped in his tracks; his tail took another couple of steps before he, too, ceased walking. Which was the greater danger? He glanced over at his angel, but she shrugged her shoulders. "We do not know who either is, nor can we guess the goals of the one ahead."

No help there. He had heard the one behind, though, so turning to his right – which placed his left arm with its shield bracelet between him and the staircase in the process – and pulling out his flame wand he called out, "I can hear you, you know! Come out!"

There was no response, nor did either person move. Sighing internally, he continued the turn, his eyes firmly on the polished suit of armor standing guard nearby. A chance to shoot him in the back should be too attractive to any attacker to let pass by, but that person would need to move if he wanted to take advantage of his opening, and that motion should be reflected by the breastplate—

There!

"_Vahan_!" he called out, the blue circle popping into existence. He was just in time; a dark red jet of light hit the shield and was bent out of its proper course, hitting the stone wall instead. Harry launched a fireball at his attacker, and he did not wait for it to explode before he dropped his thorn wand and whipped out the one all wizards were expected to carry. "_Protego_!"

The light that hit that shield was a pale blue, and it sizzled like boiling water against the surface of his right-sided shield for just a moment. Letting that shield fade, he pointed his wand at the attacker who had been following him. "_Flipendo_! _Stupefy_!" The first hex herded his attacker into the second, and the black-robed figure dropped.

Now that it was only one person trying to attack him, he let his shield fade and called the thorn wand into his left hand with a muttered incantation. "_Ayrvel_!" Both wands spat out fireballs, though only the one from his righthand wand went any appreciable distance. His opponent dodged right, long black hair streaming behind her – not a him at all; a her – and he followed it up with a Leg-Locker Curse. The girl tripped now that her feet could not move apart. He took a couple of steps to the side to dodge the too-cheerful pink spell she threw at him, and then he hit her with a second Stunning Spell.

A whispered "_Krtsel_" put out the fires still merrily burning on her clothing, and he glanced over his shoulder to look at his first attacker. That individual was a girl, as well, and though she was lying face-down on the floor, he could just barely see the hint of red that marked the brunette as a Gryffindor. "She looks younger than me."

"She is," Lash aggreed. "Marissa Creswick, a first-year. The other one is Julie Hirano, who is in the same House and year."

"So two Gryffindor girls are attacking me. Do they still honestly believe that I'm the Heir or something?"

"Perhaps it is that, or perhaps it is another reason," she said suspiciously. "Look at what fell out of Hirano's hand."

He glanced down. It looked like the girl had tried to protect herself from the blast of fire with her left arm, and as a result her entire sleeve was little better than cinders. Laying just a short distance from that hand, however, was a small, leather-bound book, and it did not look like it had been touched by fire in the slightest. "Did that come out of her pocket when she fell, or did it just tumble out of her pocket?"

"I caught only the briefest glimpse, but it was in her hand when she tried to curse you."

Crouching over it, he gave it a once-over with his magical sense. It was a good thing he did; he nearly covered his ears at the discordant clanging that reached him. There was a ton of power held inside that little thing, and without knowing what it was, he did not want even to pick it up. This was something he really should leave for someone with more experience to handle. Running up the stairs, he looked around for someone to call for help. A portrait hung right on the ground floor landing, the man inside appearing to be oblivious to everything going on around him until Harry shouted, "A professor! I need someone to get me a professor!"

"Pipe down, boy!" the portrait barked. "We're trying to keep an eye out for— Wait, you need a professor, you said?"

"Yes, any of them! Just get one down here now!"

The man ran out of sight behind his picture's frame, and Harry tapped his foot impatiently. It only took a couple of minutes for not one but two teachers to run his way. "Mr. Potter," Flitwick demanded, Sprout puffing along behind him, "whatever is the matter?!"

"Down here! I was on my way to the Great Hall when these two attacked me." The professors followed him down the stairs, and both were surprised to see his unconscious assailants. "Hirano dropped this book when I knocked her out. I don't know what it is, but it's powerful."

The dumpy head of Hufflepuff House eyed the two girls before giving him a suspicious glance. "How do we know that what you say is true? Miss Hirano is probably the least confrontational girl in her class, and it looks like someone tried to set her on fire! Isn't it more likely that _she_ is the victim here, not you?"

He groaned. Really? She was just going to ignore his claims? "When people cast spells at me, I just want them to stop. Fire is good at that."

Sprout opened her mouth to reply, but Flitwick raised his hand for silence. "She cast a spell at you, Mr. Potter? Did she cast anything at all between doing that and you Stunning her?"

"No."

"Then there is a simple way to determine what happened. Wands," he said, picking up the girl's focus, "remember the last spell they cast. Investigators at the DMLE have a spell they use to find out what that spell was, so if you're telling the truth, we should be able to see just what she tried to cast on you."

He crossed his arms. "Good enough for me."

"Then let us find out." Waving his own wand in a complicated pattern and tapping the tip of Hirano's, he commanded, "_Priori Incanto_."

Harry did not know what he expected to come out of the wand, but a loud, blood-curdling scream was not it. Nor did he expect both professors to pale abruptly.

"Filius, was that…?"

"It was, Pomona. What kind of first-year student knows how to cast the Cruciatus Curse?"

Glancing between them, Harry asked, "The Cruciatus Curse?"

"An extremely Dark spell," Flitwick told him in a grave voice. "So Dark that casting it on any sapient being will see you thrown into prison for the rest of your life, without even the possibility of being released. Where is that book you mentioned?"

"Right there. I didn't want to touch it once I had an idea of how much magic was in it."

"Probably a good idea, but now we need to know what is in it." Picking the book up, Flitwick opened it to a random page. Scarcely had he looked inside before he slammed the book shut and brought his hand to his forehead. "Dear Merlin."

"Is it cursed?"

"I don't know, Pomona, but I don't think so. This book," he said, shaking it slightly in his hand, "is a grimoire. I saw a number of spell diagrams and incantations written out, along with brief descriptions of their effects."

Sprout frowned. "If it's just a grimoire, why do you look like you're having the worst headache of your life?"

"Because when I looked at it, I started remembering things that I know have never happened. At least, not to me. That explains the power you sensed, Mr. Potter; any artefact that could share memories with someone— Oh, shite."

Lash's mouth dropped open. "Oh, shit."

"What?" he demanded of the pair.

"It is possession," the angel replied. "Mostly, anyway. Memories are the foundation of thought and behavior. If whoever created that book found a way to infect other people with his memories, and from there his personality, suddenly it makes sense why the Heir had four different styles, and why the handwriting of the haiku and threats were initially different and gradually became the same. This was not the work of one person; there were _four_ Heirs running around, all of them working independently until this past week, and as the year went on, they became more and more like the grimoire's creator."

Flitwick was explaining the same thing in different words, and Sprout stared down at him in frightful comprehension. "Didn't the first victim who lost her memory share a dorm with these girls? Do you think they cursed her so as to cover their tracks?"

"I would not doubt it for a second."

"But if there were four of them," Harry began, and then the pieces clicked into place. "Oh, shite."

"What is it, Mr. Potter?"

"Where's Weasley?" The professors looked at him in confusion. "She's who I saw controlling the basilisk that petrified Sally-Anne and the Fat Friar. Dumbledore ruled her out because there was another attack while she was suspended, but if there really were multiple Heirs running around at the same time, where is she now?"

Flitwick and Sprout stared at him, and then they turned to each other in dread. "Minerva was still looking for her when we left," Sprout whispered.

Then they heard the screaming.

* * *

**It's funny to think about it now, but back in chapter 20, several people sent me reviews to the effect of "Curse-Breaking requires runes, not arithmancy! How could you miss something so obvious?", which is canonically not the case. It's interesting how quickly fanon catches on sometimes, isn't it? Same with arithmancy in general; I know that it's supposed to be a branch of divination per J.K., but I prefer the view I first read… somewhere, can't remember which story, that instead turned it into what is essentially magical physics.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	30. The Man Behind the Mask

**Last chapter. Here we go.**

* * *

**Chapter 30  
****The Man Behind the Mask**

The professors ran the entire way to the Great Hall, and Harry was right behind them. This entire situation was untenable. Two Heirs still running around, neither of them people anyone would suspect of being behind this until it was too late, and one of them had a giant monster that could kill with a glance and had a bite no one had ever survived. If there were such things as living weapons of mass destruction, a basilisk would be one.

"Why are they doing this?" Sprout panted. "They wanted the Muggleborns out of the school. They're getting it. Why do any of this now?"

Flitwick looked over at her, his own breath just as sharp. He might not have the excess weight his colleague did, but he still had to run twice as fast as Sprout and Harry if he wanted to keep up. "Possession. Two very different minds cannot dwell in a single body at the same time. Not without damaging each other. They've lost sight of their goal and are focused just on killing now. At least, that's what I think. A Mind Healer needs to see them to be sure. We have to stop them before they can kill anyone else, by any means necessary."

"Any means necessary? You don't mean killing them, do you?"

"We might not have a choice," he admitted. "But I hope we can avoid that. These girls are victims, too. Just as much as the people they hurt."

"So we need to take them down fast. The longer the fight goes on, the bigger the risk we might kill them." The professors both turned to look at him, but before they could deny his inclusion, he reminded them, "_They_ attacked _me_. Like it or not, I'm already involved."

"…You have a point." Looking ahead, Flitwick shook his head with a loud groan. "Fine. But leave the actual fighting to us. If you know a good shield charm, protect the other students from any ricochets. If not, attack them _only_ if you have a good shot at their backs. Do anything else, and I will see you in detention."

Harry smiled at the absurdity of that threat. Right now, with the school closing and a killing machine on the loose, detention was the least of his concerns.

They turned the corner into the corridor leading to the Great Hall, and their worst fears were realized. The body of an enormous snake filled the space, the far end shifting around as the head moved to and fro inside the Great Hall itself. Without warning, the snake reared back, and Harry did not have time to shield his face. Because of that, he saw the material plastered over the top of the serpent's head to cover its eyes, and strangely enough, the substance had lines and whorls that strongly reminded him of wood.

"Minerva, you crazy, clever witch!" Flitwick's shout attracted the basilisk's attention, and it turned its unseeing head towards them before a barrage of spellfire caught it on its flank. "Mister Potter, change of plans. You head inside. Do you know what Theresa Jordan looks like?"

Looking over at Lash, he caught her firm nod and gave the same to Flitwick. He knew she would know whom he was looking for.

"Good. She has to be the last Heir. Help Minerva capture her and Ginny Weasley. We'll handle the snake."

"Coming through!" he shouted as he ran into the Great Hall. He really did not want to be hit by one of the older students who had organized themselves in a firing line because he startled them. Spotting the black-haired professor, he skidded to a stop. "Professor, the Heir's in here!"

"Nonsense!" Her eyes never turned from the fight against the basilisk, though she did not cast anything at the beast. Between Flitwick leading it around by the nose, Sprout doing something that Harry could not make out, and the students who were still shooting whenever they saw a chance, the chance of friendly fire was too high. "No one came in after the basilisk attacked!"

He shook his head and started looking around the room. "There are multiple Heirs! We need to find—" His eyes fell on the girl in question, and she could not hide her expression of hatred quickly enough to fool him. "Theresa Jordan."

McGonagall did not even have time to turn around. Grabbing the tall boy beside her – her brother, perhaps, given the similarities of their facial features – she threw him between herself and Harry. The older boy then rocketed through the air and crashed into Harry and McGonagall both. Shouts and curses rang out while they tumbled to the stony floor.

The other boy's attempts to help hindered Harry's climb to his feet more than anything, and he finally shoved the Gryffindor off so he could get up. What he found was not great, but not as bad as it could have been. Other students had been quick to move against the Heir, but Jordan had grabbed another girl and was using her as a human shield. How she could sling the already-unconscious girl's dead weight around like it was nothing, he could only guess. With a hostage in her grasp, the defending students were forced to be careful in their choice of attack. Jordan, on the other hand, had no such restriction. Several people were already on the ground; none dead if their moans were any indication, but they were out of the fight nonetheless.

"_Accio_!" McGonagall bellowed from beside him, and the poor girl being used to defend her attacker was yanked toward the elder witch. Jordan, as a result of her tight grip, was pulled along for the ride.

Now that was a trick he could use. Waiting until the pair got close enough, Harry threw his right hand out. "_Herranal_!" His blast was mostly spent negating Jordan's own speed, but the two spells working in opposition were enough to rip the Heir's hostage out of her grasp. She tumbled to the ground and rolled a few feet away from them before coming to a stop. Raising her head, she sent Harry a murderous glare.

And then she was promptly buried under a hailstorm of curses.

"I dearly hope you were telling the truth, Mister Potter. Her reaction leaves little doubt, but…." McGonagall sighed and shook her head. "How did you even know she was the Heir?"

"Professor Flitwick figured it out. There were four Heirs, and we already caught two of them." Pulling the slim book out of his pocket, he held it up for her to see. "They all read from this grimoire, and apparently it implanted someone's memories—"

The book was ripped out of his grasp and flew to the far side of the room into Ginny Weasley's hand. Before anyone could aim a wand at her, she dashed away, blasting the older students who were on guard against the basilisk into their fellows as she slipped into the corridor.

McGonagall glanced between the fight still going on against the gigantic snake and the front door of the castle, torn on which enemy needed to be taken care of first. Harry decided to make it simpler. "I have my broom on me," he said while pulling the homemade broomstick out of his expanded pouch. "I can catch up to Weasley before she gets away if you help them with the basilisk."

"Go." He threw his leg over the broom while she ran towards the serpent, and so he nearly missed her next command. "Be careful."

He could not help the smile that appeared. That was undoubtedly the nicest thing the Transfiguration professor had said to him since he first met her. Kicking off the ground, he pushed as much speed as he could out of the focus and zipped through the air and out the door. Weasley had not had that long to run, so she still had to be…. There! He raced after her, but she slipped into the trees of the Forbidden Forest before he could catch up.

Ascending quickly, he shook his head when he saw just how thick the forest's canopy was. There was no way he would be able to follow her from the skies, and the limbs of the trees were interlaced to create a thick wall not far past the edge. He had no other choice; he would have to follow her on foot if he wanted to follow her at all.

"Lash, how bad would it be if she got away?"

A weight at his back revealed where the former Fallen was. "I do not know. If her mental state is degrading as rapidly as Flitwick assumes, she will eventually become a greater danger to herself than to anyone else, but there is no way to predict how long that will take. She is not the true threat here, though. The grimoire is. There is no way to know how many people the personality contained within can infect, but considering the damage four eleven-year-olds were capable of…."

He shuddered at that thought. They were looking at potentially dozens of artificial psychopaths, and if all of them worked together the way the Heirs had at the end? That was something to be avoided at all costs. Looking down at the forest, he sighed. Yes, even if those costs involved chasing after Weasley in the Forbidden Forest.

Barely had he walked twenty feet into the forest before he started feeling hemmed in. A glance behind him, just to check that there was still a route back if necessary, left him confused and worried; unless he had gained the ability to walk through solid objects without knowing it, the tree that was obscuring the school from view had not been there before. He had walked in a straight line.

Or, at least, he thought he had.

Harry wordlessly asked his guardian angel for help, but she could only turn to him with a lost expression. "I do not know what to tell you. I saw no signs that your vision was being manipulated, but _genius loci_ as a general rule do not have the power to reshape themselves like that."

"I guess I'm stuck trusting the forest not to send me into a bear's den, then."

As it turned out, the bear was not the problem he had to worry about. He estimated that he spent approximately fifteen minutes moving deeper into the forest, and now he was thoroughly lost. With a huff of frustration, he turned to Lash. "Where am I?"

"I have tried to map out your path, but every time you look behind you, the placement of the trees is different from what it was earlier. I do not know where you are any better than you do."

"Great." He pulled his foot back to give a nearby an irritated kick, but his foot stopped at the peak of its curve when a thought occurred to him. Would that even work? He had no idea, and it relied on another party choosing not to mess with him, but it was still worth a shot, wasn't it? Lowering his foot, he instead stretched out his hand and laid it on the smooth bark of the tree. "I don't know if you care. I don't even know if you're listening. But the girl who ran in here? She's dangerous. I don't think she cares who she has to hurt or who she has to kill to get what she wants." He leaned back but did not remove his hand from the tree, thinking about what he had said. That was something he would say to a person, but he was not talking to a person. He was talking to the spirit of a forest. What would a forest care about? "It's…. I don't think she would only attack people, either. Any creature that got in her way? She'd probably kill it. If she needed to, I don't think she would think twice about knocking down all the trees.

"I need your help. I'm not asking for you to stop her, though if you did, I'd be thankful. I just need help finding her. I'm lost, and maybe that's just me, or maybe that's you. But I need to find her if I'm going to stop her, and right now, I'm the only one here. So… please. Help me."

He did not know what he expected, but nothing changed as a result of his plea. The trees did not move. No helpful woodland creature popped out to be his guide. Everything was the same as it was before he tried talking to the spirit of the forest.

Finally, he pulled away. He had given it a try. With a shake of his head, he plunged back into the woods.

He ran for barely three minutes before he noticed something strange. In front of him, the natural trail divided. This by itself was no great surprise; the paths had been doing this since he entered the forest. No, what was odd was that while the path leading to the right looked just the same as they all had – an uneven surface with roots crisscrossing all along its length and the occasional branch laying on the ground as an additional tripping hazard – the one going left did not. It was smooth, and the roots were all turned parallel to the path so that they looked almost like they were meant to be borders. But that made no sense; why would there be a single cultivated path here, in the depths of the forest? The only reason that would be the case was….

Turning to the nearest tree, he gave it a sunny smile. "Thank you."

The left-hand path sloped slowly and gently upwards, with a small patch in the middle where the ground had actually been carved into five uniform steps. Golden sunlight soon peeked out from between the trees, and he swerved around a trunk to gaze upon a beautiful sight. A clearing, sheltered from sight, where bright green grass covered the earth and multiple strains of birdsong could be heard coming from the edges. There was even a pair of deer at the far end; they looked up and gave him no more than a passing glance before they sedately wandered away into the shadows.

The idyllic atmosphere was broken when a sulfurous voice came from the other end of the clearing. A moment later, Weasley broke through the underbrush and looked around with a scowl. "Where am I?"

"_T'ak'un_." The veil hid Harry from sight before she spotted him, and he started running as quietly as he could towards her. He needed to get closer if he wanted to hit her with a Stunning Spell; from this distance, she would have all the time in the world to avoid it. Thirty feet away. Twenty-five. Twenty.

Her eyes shot to the ground at his feet, and she slashed her wand and barked some unintelligible word. The grass rippled as a wave of force swept over it, and then it slammed into him. He hit the ground hard, tumbling over and over before finally coming to a stop. Climbing to his feet, he scowled when he saw that his veil had fallen at some point. There went the element of surprise.

"Harry Potter." Weasley smiled, the expression cold. "I hoped you would be the one to come after me. I didn't think you would, not with you being such a coward, but I hoped. I've wanted to meet you my entire life, did you know that? Even last year, when you became a Slytherin. I was sure there was something nobody was telling me, something that would explain everything. There wasn't."

He frowned. There was something off about this. Then again, that might just be what he had to expect from someone who had two different minds trying to meld together. "It seems strange for someone who went around claiming to be the Heir of Slytherin to be so condescending about his House."

"I can respect the man's philosophy and dislike what has become of his legacy."

"Yeah, about that. Where'd all the hate for the Muggleborns come from?" While he was talking, he sidled over to the left and turned so she would not see him reach for the thorn wand he had slipped back into his pocket. "Your family is about as pro-Muggle and -Muggleborn as they come. Seems strange that you'd grow up with such a different opinion. Is that something else you learned that from your little book of yours?"

"My family," she spat, "is blind. Muggle-lovers, all of them, but have any of them ever _met_ a Muggle? Only my father, and he is too busy talking about how clever they are that they can do little tricks to pay attention to what else they do. I was blind, too, but Tom opened my eyes." She lifted the hand carrying the grimoire and stroked it as though it were a favorite pet. "He was forced to live with the Muggles. He saw what they're really like. They're vile, violent little beasts. They turn on each other without provocation over the least important things. They're a blight on our world, and they deserve to be wiped out."

"Vile, violent little beasts." Harry shook his head. "So you're saying wizards and witches aren't? After you and your friends attacked other students, you honestly think you have the moral high ground?"

"We did what was necessary! The Muggleborns and the blood-traitors would see us become just like Muggles! They _have_ to be stopped! Whatever it takes, even if they all have to die! We're saving our world!"

Wow. Okay, she was legitimately crazy. With his thorn wand gripped firmly, he gave her a single nod. "I think I see what you're doing. But if— _Ayrvel_!"

The unexpected fireball flying at her face caught her off-guard, but she rallied quickly enough that she could spray water out of her wand like a hose to quench it. That gush of water turned into a torrent, and the blow smashed into his chest and flung him into the air so he could crash into the ground for the second time in as many minutes. Barely had he staggered to his feet before he noticed that he was having difficulty moving. Frost covered his clothes, and in front of his eyes that layer of ice grew and merged into a thick shell that trapped him.

"You're just like them, aren't you?" said Weasley with a sneer. "You don't even try to understand. You just—"

Harry kept an eye on the ranting girl, but so long as she did not raise her wand, she was giving him time to escape. He whispered the incantation for his fire this time, letting his magic pour out both hands. He did not want a fireball, not with his hands pinned to his sides by the ice as they were; all he needed were the flames themselves. Lash had told him even before he entered Hogwarts that his own magic was incapable of harming himself. Now he was going to put that to the test.

Two minutes later, and she was still talking. That was fine. The ice wrapped around his arms sloughed off.

The motion caught her attention, and she hurled a violently purple curse at him without saying a word; he barely managed to call up his shield in time to deflect it. One of these days, he really needed to find out how these girls were all able to do that. A different spell came at him this time, and then she smiled and started walking to the side far too calmly for his peace of mind. What was she planning now?

"This is becoming a battle of attrition," Lash whispered in his ear. "She does not need to cast any magic at you, but you need to keep your shield up or risk being cursed. The longer this goes on, the more likely it is that she will be the victor. You need to end this quickly!"

With that warning ringing in the air, he cast a Leg-Locker Hex through his shield. The spell splashed on a golden shield, and Weasley smirked at him like a particularly satisfied cat. Much as it galled him to admit it, this girl was better with a wand despite the difference in age, even if she had cheated to get there. How could he gain the advantage?

Then again, that might be the answer.

"_Zhamanel_!"

Weasley's wand slipped from her grasp, but she snatched it back before it could escape. "Clever," she said, her voice anything but pleased. A jet of blood-red light flew into the blue circle and missed by a wide margin. With his feet and legs still frozen, he was never more glad that he had modified his shield bracelet to redirect spells as well as physical objects.

His eyes widened. Moving his hand slightly and focusing on something else, he repeated the incantation.

This time Weasley's wand raced towards him, but that was only because it was the girl herself he had summoned. She was unable to throw another curse before she slammed face-first into his shield, and then flew over him to fall awkwardly onto the ground. It was a good thing she had been sent to his right; had she gone left, instead, she would have been directly behind him. Before she climbed to her feet, he pointed at her once again. "_Nirh_!"

A bolt of lavender, and she collapsed like an abandoned marionette.

He laughed, the sound tired and relieved. It was over. Finally.

His fire made quick work of the remaining ice, which was already starting to melt on its own, and he cast a Stunning Spell at the unconscious girl to make sure she did not wake up. Levitating her, he turned to the nearest tree. "Thank you. Really, I'm grateful."

The walk back to the castle was not as clear as the path the forest had formed, but it was still easier than the initial plunge, and only a few minutes passed before the edge of the woods and the school beyond came into view. "Even if it wasn't entirely your fault," he told Weasley, "I hope you understand just how much trouble you and your friends caused. Flitwick better destroy that grimoire as soon as he can."

If the tiny professor was still alive. He could not hear the sounds of battle, but that just meant the fight was over, not that humanity was the survivor.

"If that snake is still alive, it would be the cherry atop this utter disaster of a day."

* * *

The mood on the Hogwarts Express as it chugged its way south was somber. Students did not flutter from one compartment to the next, choosing instead to stay in their seats. The trolley of sweets did not make its way along the train. And the rearmost cabin was silent as death, for that was where the bodies of the dead had been laid. Twenty-three students were murdered that morning, of all years and all Houses, as well as two teachers. Lockhart, who according to witnesses had screamed and tried to run before he looked in the basilisk's gaze, and Sinistra, who had looked over to see what was causing the disturbance.

Considering that all a basilisk needed to do to kill was to meet someone's eyes, it was honestly a miracle that only twenty-five people had died. A miracle and McGonagall's quick thinking.

Hannah and Susan had eschewed a compartment with their fellow Badgers to sit with Harry instead, and though he did not know if they had done it so they would have somewhere to grieve in private or so he would not be alone, he appreciated their company all the same.

"Hogwarts won't reopen next year," Susan said, breaking the silence that had filled the compartment for the last two hours.

Harry sighed. "Probably not."

"It might never open again."

No one said anything for several minutes, and finally Hannah sighed. "My mum wrote me last week that she signed me up at Anthony College for next year. After the troll last year, and then the Heir? She wouldn't let me come back even if it was open."

"Auntie hasn't said where I'm going next year. What about you, Harry?"

"I don't know. I don't know where any other schools are." Or even if he wanted to go to one. He had never run into dangers like these before attending Hogwarts, and this was the perfect time to slip back into the normal world as he wanted to do. "I might try homeschooling. That or go to Beauxbatons; my French is pretty good."

"I didn't know you spoke French," Susan said quietly.

"No one at Hogwarts does."

That thoughtless comment stifled the conversation for a long minute. Hannah sighed. "I tried to tell people in our House that you weren't the Heir, but they didn't believe me."

"I know. I overheard you and Finch-Fletchey arguing with Macmillan in the library." The blonde blushed at that admission. "Thank you, and if you see him, tell him thanks, too. It meant a lot that you'd stand up for me like that."

"It's just what friends do."

The Express rolled into King's Cross as night was falling, and the students poured out into the arms of anxious adults. Harry watched the girls reunite with their families until a soft hand was laid on his shoulder. "I know," he told his angel. "It's time to go."

"It is. We have no way of knowing what will come next, but we need to be ready for it. Two disasters occurring around you in as many years, and both of them involving a murder possessing someone? I do not like the pattern that is developing."

"So lots more work, right?" He smiled faintly. "Then we better get home and start on it.

"_Darbas_."

And then he was gone.

* * *

**So…. Not my original plan, but it seems like a good place for the book to end. We'll just have to see if or when my muse decides to give me ideas for part 2.**

**Silently Watches out.**


	31. APOLOGIES

I think some of you have expected this for a while. I told you that I was going to continue this story. I told many of you that I needed to re-plot everything because the last several chapters went off the rails. And I _tried_, oh god I tried. But it's time for me to admit it. This story is not going to be completed.

The first reason is exactly what I told you. In trying to wrap the story up as quickly as I could, I made decisions I wasn't planning on. The Heirs' attacks were never supposed to get as vicious as they did, and certainly not enough to close Hogwarts. In my original notes, third year happened similarly to canon but in the background while Harry found the threads of another plot, one that would be realized in fourth year when he left Hogwarts to go on an adventure. With Hogwarts closed, this is the perfect time to move that up, but he hasn't had the chance to collect those threads, and I can't think of a way to introduce it quickly that doesn't ram it down your throats. Trying to rearrange everything and come up with filler for the first several months of Part 2 isn't going to be fast or easy, and I don't have time now that I'm in residency and actually practicing medicine full-time. Twice full-time, actually, since I work 80 hour weeks.

That's reason number one. I don't like to talk about reason number two, but in conversation with somebody over on Sufficient Velocity, I realized you deserve to hear it, if only because it's in some ways the more important reason. Writing this story was… bleak. In hindsight, I should have put Harry in Hufflepuff, but I wanted a challenge, and writing him in Slytherin was something I have seen multiple times but never how I thought it would work out if it really happened. What I got was a story where the main character was almost completely alone except for the voice in his head. Putting myself in the state of mind where I could write that threw me into several episodes of depression, and not only is it hard for me to _want_ to go back there, I can't afford to do so. It was one thing to be actively clinically depressed as a medical student, when the only one who would suffer the consequences was myself. But now it's outright _dangerous_ for the patients I'm taking care of in the hospital for me to be in that mental state, especially when it's my own doing that put me there. I just can't take that risk.

If there's anybody who wants to pick this story up, I have the notes for what were my original plans and will happily send them to you. If anyone wants to write a story and use elements of this tale, or wants to integrate something I came up with in a story you're already writing, go right ahead. But I can't come back to this, and it and you don't deserve to be kept in a perpetual state of limbo when I know in my heart it's never going to return.

I truly am sorry for stringing you guys along like this.

Silently Watches


End file.
